The Penitent Priest (The Father Tom Mysteries)

Ten years ago, his wife died in his arms. God saved him for Himself. Now, he wants his first love to catch her killer. 

Father Tom Greer is playing with fire.

 

Tom Greer left Myerton six months after his wife Joan's death, determined to leave the painful memories behind. Ten years later, now-Father Tom Greer returns for a four-month assignment as the temporary pastor of Saint Clare's Parish in Myerton. His only desire is to serve God's people quietly then leave again. 

 

But the past won't leave Father Tom alone…

 

When he uncovers Joan's long-buried secrets--secrets he believes point to her killer--Father Tom seeks help from the local police. But Detective Helen Parr is a woman he once loved--and whose heart he broke twenty years before. She refuses to reopen the investigation, so Father Tom turns to an ambitious reporter with her own agenda. When the reporter winds up dead, he must work with Helen to catch her killer--and potentially Joan's.

 

But Father Tom has secrets of his own, secrets about the night his wife was murdered.  The closer he gets to the truth, the closer gets to confronting what he's avoided for ten years…

 

His own guilt.

 

Don't miss this first book in a new murder mystery thriller series in the tradition of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, introducing Father Tom Greer, a 21st Century Father Brown

 

 

Susan Mathis was born in and grew up in an extremely small town in Alachua County, Florida where her family has lived for more than 100 years. When Susan was still very young, James (J.R) Mathis was born in a somewhat bigger small town about 100 miles south of where she lived. Within a decade, James' small town would become part of Orlando, the biggest tourist destination in the United States. He was not amused. That is how, while Susan was running barefoot, swimming in lakes full of alligators and feeding chickens, James was sitting in his bedroom reading books faster than his father could bring them home from the library.

Were James and Susan to write their love story, it would definitely be an enemies-to-lovers trope. They met in the library where he was working. He found her demands for books that he had to pull and bring to her so unreasonable that he actually turned her into the head librarian. She in turn was so anxious to drive him away that when some friends secretly set them up she laid out an entire speech about how miserable her life was (she is typically very upbeat). Little did she suspect that he had a passionate attraction to misery and they were married just over a year later.

Fast forward 26 years, three children, four grandchildren and 20 years of James working for the Federal government. He was diagnosed with a highly treatable but still very scary form of cancer. As so often happens, this brush with mortality inspired him to do something he'd always wanted to do, write a novel. After the publication of the second Father Tom Mystery, Susan joined him as coauthor. As far as the Mathises are concerned, writing together is the most fun a couple can have sitting at a computer.