The Purloined Paintings

Detective Helen Parr is recovering from being shot in Leslie Williams' basement and is anxious to get back to work. With the police department in the hands of Acting Chief Detective Dan Conway, Father Tom Greer is determined that his fiance follows her doctor's orders and rests. All that's needed for this to happen is for life to be quiet and peaceful.

But this is Myerton, and this town nestled in the mountains of Western Maryland is far from quiet and peaceful.

First comes the murder of Bethany Grable, owner of The Painted Lotus art gallery and old friend of Father Tom. Dan's convinced she was the victim of a robbery gone wrong. Father Tom, on the other hand, is not so sure.

Then comes the wave of overdose deaths of young students at Myer College. Someone is selling fentanyl at prices college kids can afford. They're all art majors, and all of them happen to have had pieces displayed in Bethany's gallery.

Coincidence? Or is there a connection between the ODs and Bethany Grable's murder? And if so, what is the connection?

Father Tom decides to try to find out for himself who killed his old friend and why. But doing so could put the life of a young man in danger, and irreparably harm his friendship with Dan.

Along the way, Father Tom learns that Helen wasn't the only person wounded in that basement . . .

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.