Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990 TAG: 9005060275
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ANNA WENTWORTH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
Kienzle's latest mystery is primarily a soap box for his characters' views on the Catholic Church, mostly concerning the post-Vatican II Council changes. As a whodunnit, it's less than satisfying.
Father Koesler, Kienzle's amateur sleuth, and Sister Marie, a nun he meets at a writers' conference, spend a great deal of time mulling over changes in Catholicism. Their comments are interesting from the standpoint of an outsider who knows little about the Church, pre- or post-Vatican II, but I wonder how interesting they would be to a Catholic well versed in the subject.
In comparison to this background, the actual murder and its solution seem almost an afterthought. The setting is promising. A mystery writers' conference is convened on a small, cloistered college campus. The invited guests include a nun, a priest, a rabbi and a monk who all write mystery novels using characters based on their religious experience.
The focus of the workshop is an evangelist of questionable morals who owns a publishing house that has been trying to enlist these writers to no avail. A staged murder becomes a prelude to the real thing and the only available suspects are among these religious folks.
Father Koesler is drawn into the investigation and is forced to conclude that someone within the religious community could be capable of murder. The individual characters and their backgrounds are intriguing, but the murder and its solution are a bit anticlimactic.
by CNB