Harlot's Moon - Softcover

Gorman, Edward

3.41

61 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312967713 ISBN 13: 9780312967710

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1999

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While investigating the murder of one priest, former-FBI profiler Robert Payne receives a call from another, but when he goes to their meeting spot, this priest is dead as well, and Payne must find the connection before another priest dies. Reprint.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

For a change, psychological profiler (and unwilling amateur historian) Robert Payne's third case (Hawk Moon, 1996, etc.) involves his own past as much as anybody's. The phone call that takes him out to the Palms Hotel and Father Peter Daly's cooling corpse comes from his old friend Steve Gray, now Monsignor Gray of St. Mallory's parish. Why would anybody kill a priest? Father Daly's own past--replete with affairs with the parish women he was supposed to be counseling--provides suspects aplenty. But Payne, aghast at having discovered that the priest's tongue has been cut out, can't help linking his murder to a series of crimes Father Daly had been keeping newspaper clippings of: prostitute Tawanna Jackson (no eyes), child-molesting insurance exec Ronald Swanson (no left ear), and wife-beating schoolteacher Michael Grady (no ears on either side). Since all the victims were connected to St. Mallory's, there's obviously a connection, but what is it, and how far back does it go, and how many killers does it involve? Before Payne can put the pieces together, he'll need to come to terms with the return of his own past in the form of his hated stepfather, who's plopped himself on Payne's doorstep to die. Veteran Gorman plots too generously to allow any of the bewildered St. Mallory's sinners much time in the limelight, but they're all well worth your attention. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

St. Mallory's Catholic church connects a series of murders in this gripping mystery featuring former FBI psychological profiler Robert Payne (last seen in Hawk Moon, 1996). Now working as an investigator for a law firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Payne is asked by an old school friend, Monsignor Steven Gray, to look into the murder of Father Daly, a fellow parish priest at St. Mallory's. Father Daly, a counselor known to have had affairs with many of his female clients, was found in a cheap motel with his tongue cut out. Suspicion centers on Ellie Wilson, wife of the parish board president, whose earring was found in Father Daly's motel room. Once Payne finds newspaper clippings in Father Daly's belongings about murders of St. Mallory's parishioners (a prostitute whose eyes had been cut out and a pedophile whose ear had been cut off), he works up a psychological profile of the killer that leads him to someone at St. Mallory's. Payne belongs to the hard-boiled detective school, but Gorman gives him an appealing softer side by detailing his loving relationship with live-in girlfriend Felice, by showing his attention to a young girl with cerebral palsy and by examining his ambivalent feelings for his dying stepfather. The prolific Gorman delivers another smooth page-turner with top-notch mystery production values.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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