Tom, 3 years and 4 months agoAndrew M. Greeley: The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain is one of Father Greeley's Bishop Blackie Ryan mystery novels. John Blackwood Ryan is an auxiliary bishop to the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago with a knack for solving mysteries, especially mysteries of the locked room variety. The series is great and this book is no exception. Blackie accompanies the Cardinal on a trip to Paris to put his powers of deduction to work in solving the disappearance of a popular young charismatic priest. There are enough clues that I had the mystery figured out about 85% of the way through the book, a few pages ahead of Blackie, which in my view is just about perfect. The «solution» to the puzzle is not obvious though, so unless you just have a flash of inspiration you won't have it in the first chapter and be bored the rest of the way. Of course, there is lots of back story and subplot aside from the mystery, from the eponymous Beggar Girl's life and love to the unrequited (mostly?) passion of Cardinal Cronin for his sister-in-law.
It's tough to get 5 stars on Amazon, but this is one of the best mysteries I've read, perhaps because of the unusual dayjob of the «detective» and his penchant for using the word «arguably» which is patently one of my own favorites.
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