With the Fighting Irish set to square off against Georgia Tech, Roger Knight, the rotund professor of Catholic studies, and his brother Philip, a semi-retired P.I., know that Notre Dame fans will be out in force. The faithful swear that on game day the entire campus comes alive to cheer on the football team, and they don't have to look any further than Touchdown Jesus or Fair Catch Corby, a statue of a Civil War chaplain who seems to be signaling another pass completion, for proof, misguided as it may be. But this year, this friendly and sometimes heated North-South rivalry turns downright hostile when Notre Dame's ties to the Union during the Civil War are dug up, and two students, brothers and Southern gentlemen, are spurred to defend their honor with a prank nearly 150 years after the fact. While they both admit to being the culprit, only one of them could've actually committed the vandalism. But which one? By stretching one alibi over two people, they...

Tough times and the unsolved murders of anyone with ties to the Deveres---a family of wealthy parish patrons---back Father Dowling up against a wall in his struggle to save his church from the chopping block.With too many churches and not enough people to fill them, the Archdiocese has to make some cuts, and many of them, including the proposed closing of St. Hilary’s, are dangerously close to the bone. Father Dowling rushes to drum up support from church officials and parishioners, including the Deveres, who don’t want to see the stained glass windows they donated go anywhere other than the church they were meant for, but they can hardly be of help when those closest to them start turning up dead.Church politics, long-kept family secrets, and a determined killer come together to put St. Hilary’s---a church that countless characters and devoted readers have come to love---and its parishioners in peril in Stained Glass, the latest in Ralph McInerny’s treasured mystery series.From Publishers WeeklyIsolated by demographic changes, St. Hilary's of Fox River, Ill., struggles for its very survival in McInerny's timely 28th novel to feature Father Dowling (after 2008's Ash Wednesday). When the archdiocese decides to close half a dozen parishes, including Father Dowling's, the congregation of St. Hilary's joins the priest in a campaign to prevent the action. Meanwhile, the discovery of a nude female body hanging from the cross strut of a garage door points to a ritual killing. More murders follow. The police, local reporters and Father Dowling get on a trail that comes dangerously close to the Devere family, longtime church benefactors who donated the magnificent Menotti stained-glass windows to St. Hilary's. The outcome will surprise even the most astute reader. Series fans will enjoy catching up with old friends, while everyone will find much to savor in the fresh and challenging plot. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ReviewPraise for Ralph McInerny’s Father Dowling Mysteries“Father Dowling’s twenty-seventh gently probes questions of guilt, intention, and absolution while having a bit of fun with small-town nattering.”*“In his usual gentle, thoughtful way, Father Dowling makes compassionate decisions. . . . Readers who long for a down-to-earth story of ordinary people and events will be well rewarded.”*“This series continues to deliver, with a fascinating protagonist, intelligent plotting, and dry humor.”*“Father Dowling is not the average priest. . . .  He has been through the mill himself, is tough, yet has compassion.”*“You don’t have to go to church to worship mystery lovers’ esteemed Father Dowling.”“Mystery at its bloodless, cerebral best . . . Dowling is the perfect father confessor, dealing with moral dilemmas and the weakness of man with compassion and understanding.”

Gregory Barrett, a classmate of Father Dowling’s, left the priesthood twenty-five years ago. Now, after all these years, a woman threatens to bring a multimillion-dollar suit against him, alleging he sexually exploited her when he was still a priest and she was sixteen. Barrett has no memory of her, but is devastated at what these claims will do to his career as a radio host and to his new family. So he comes to Father Dowling for advice. Father Dowling, a parish priest in Fox River, Illinois, as usual, serves as part counselor, part sounding board, and part moral compass for priests and parishioners alike---not to mention cops and lawyers---and offers help to both Barrett and his accuser.Before Barrett can decide what to do, and before the now-adult woman has made her demands known to the archdiocese, a body washes up on the shore of Lake Michigan, and Barrett becomes the primary suspect in the murder. Also in the mix in this astutely drawn mystery are a failed writer, a parish busybody, an inept lawyer, and an embittered young man, each with his or her own agenda, and it is up to Father Dowling to unravel the links between these people whose lives were separated long ago, only to reconnect in tragedy.From Publishers WeeklyIn McInerny's tedious 25th Father Dowling mystery (after 2005's Blood Ties), the detective-cum-priest is stunned when his old classmate, Gregory Barrett, now a popular NPR personality, is accused of a decades-old sexual dalliance with a parishioner. Dowling can't believe that Barrett fathered Madeline Murphy's child, but he knows that even an unfounded accusation could destroy his friend. Into the mix add Ned Bunting, an irksome aspiring author who hopes to get famous by writing a book about clerical sexual scandals. When Bunting's body washes ashore on Lake Michigan, no one mourns. But who killed him? Was it Barrett, or some other priest, trying to squelch Bunting's exposé? The book, though timely, is so heavy on dialogue that it reads almost like a screenplay. Too little attention to scene-setting and two-dimensional characters won't win the series new fans. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistCatholic priest Father Dowling is back to solve his twenty-seventh mystery. Here he works behind the scenes to help clear a former classmate, Gregory Barrett, who has since left the priesthood, of the charge of sexually abusing a child. Barrett denies the charges, but the evidence mounts against him. The history of these types of abuse allegations--and the church's response to them--is woven throughout the story. Multiple points of view move the plot along, even with the somewhat detached writing style. As always, the frame of Catholicism and parish life add interest and authenticity to the novel. Sue O'BrienCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Prior to the kidnapping of several school administrators and the desecration of headstones in the Cedar Grove Cemetery, the University of Notre Dame's biggest worry had seemed to be this season's challenging football schedule. But these "pranks" are getting more and more serious. Then, Orion Plant, an eccentric scholar in the history program, began attracting negative media attention by claiming the university founder, Father Edward Sorin, stole the land on which the school sits from Native Americans. All in all, it's more than the board of trustees can handle. A potentially costly lawsuit, embarrassing publicity, and a scandalous half-time prank broadcast on national television, cause university chancellor Father Bloom to turn to detective Philip Knight and his brother, brilliant philosophy professor Roger Knight, for help. But just as the brothers dig into the investigation, the scholar turns up dead, an Indian headdress wrapped around his bloody head. The South...

One early morning during spring break, Detectives Phil Knight and Jimmie Stewart are enjoying a golf game at the University of Notre Dame when they find a man apparently suffering a heart attack on the green. They summon help and the man is rushed to the emergency room. But it's too late—the man dies at the hospital and an autopsy suggests that his death was not an accident. The victim—poisoned with deadly nightshade—turns out to be Mortimer Sadler, something of a boor but also an extremely generous donor to the university. He'd returned to campus for an unofficial class reunion, along with several classmates, including his three college roommates. Soon, long-buried animosities surface among the old friends. But are these old wounds strong enough to result in murder? Or was there a more recent disagreement brewing? Phil and his brother Professor Roger Knight team up to uncover the truth behind Sadler's death.Green Thumb is an...

Any year when the Fighting Irish don't go undefeated is a disappointment, but to turn in a losing football season is unheard of. This year the faithful are refusing to admit defeat even as the losses start to pile up. With the students in a funk and the alumni in an uproar, something must be done, or more precisely, somebody has to go. Since they can't expel the team, they'll have to settle for firing the multimillion-dollar head coach---but will a new coach satisfy everyone?There are some---namely faculty members with a distaste for university athletics---who see this as their chance to refocus the school on academics. When the battle between Notre Dame's academic and athletic traditions turns deadly, however, Roger Knight, professor of Catholic Studies, becomes a marked man.Accustomed to working together, Roger and his P.I. brother Philip will have to go their separate ways in Ralph McInerny's delightful The Green Revolution to unravel a campus-wide...

Martin Kilmartin is a popular young Notre Dame professor and a promising poet, and as far as everyone on campus knows, he's off to visit his ancestral Ireland over winter break. It's a shocking moment when Professor Kilmartin is discovered dead in his office, never having made it on his winter retreat. Apparently the victim of a weak heart, Kilmartin's death comes just months before he is to be wed, and on the heels of some outstanding recognition for his verse.All in all, it seems to be just another campus tragedy, and while some wonder at the authenticity of the official explanation for his death, the police are content to blame his medical condition for his untimely demise. That is, until Professor Roger Knight, big man on campus and compulsively curious amateur sleuth, gets involved. The rotund professor's interest is piqued after reading some of Kilmartin's melancholic work, and he points to several anomalies at the crime scene in questioning the case. Before...

Father Dowling is used to unsolicited knocks on the rectory door, having done more than his share of counseling and assisting in delicate situations during his long career. So when Eleanor Wygant comes to visit Father Dowling he receives her graciously, though she is a stranger. As it turns out, members of her family are longtime parishioners of St. Hillary's, and it soon becomes clear that with family trouble brewing, Eleanor doesn't know where else to turn. When she enlists Father Dowling's help in persuading her niece Jessica to scrap the tell-all family novel she is writing and concentrate on more earthly pursuits, the venerable priest has little idea how enmeshed he is about to become in the family's edgy interrelations. For in recent years, the family has had its share of melodrama, including a philandering patriarch, a son who left the priesthood to take up with an ex-nun, and an underachieving academic, and it's up to Dowling to piece together their shared history in the hopes of putting their demons-and a vicious, previously unknown murder-to rest. In the hands of Ralph McInerny, one of mystery fiction's most beloved authors, Last Things is as delightful as his legions of fans have come to expect from the charming Father Dowling series.From Publishers WeeklyFather Dowling's 22nd absorbing outing (after 2002's Prodigal Father) from the prolific McInerny is guaranteed to mystify. Ill with prostate cancer, Fulvio Bernardo, patriarch of a wealthy and influential Chicago-area family, despairs of his three children. Raymond, the eldest, was ordained a priest and was the great white hope of St. Edmund's College until he took off for California with a nun and the nun's order's car and credit card. Daughter Jessica is an author with a contract for a novel of which the lightly disguised subject is her own family. Younger son Andrew is an English professor at St. Edmund's; enter Horst Cassirer, a brilliant Ph.D. who has recently joined the department and wants tenure immediately. But his fellow professors, despite his high reputation as a researcher, find him deficient as a teacher and colleague and reject his bid. Following the deaths of Fulvio and Raymond's Edmundite mentor comes the requisite third tragedy: Cassirer's battered body is found lying in the street. Suspects abound and the suspense builds until the final chapter, when Father Dowling has a flash of inspiration. The plot moves crisply on the wings of believable dialogue among the multitude of well-drawn college-town characters. As always, McInerny explains just enough about Catholicism to make non-Catholic readers feel at home.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistMcInerny returns to his long-running Father Dowling series, and once again academic infighting at St. Edmund's College leads to murder. Father Dowling first becomes involved with the Bernardo family when Eleanor Wygant asks him to try to persuade her niece, Jessica Bernardo, to stop writing a novel based on the Bernardo family. Eleanor is afraid of the resultant scandal if her long-buried secret is revealed. Meanwhile, Jessica's brother Andrew is on a committee charged with determining tenure for a young, obnoxious English professor who begins to threaten the Bernardo family when it looks like the decision may go against him. There is a murder for Father Dowling to solve, of course, but this time McInerny seems more interested in exploring the motivations and entwined family relationships of his characters. There's also plenty of the Catholic minutiae that Father Dowling fans enjoy. A solid addition to a perennially popular series. Sue O'BrienCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

When Fred Neville of the Notre Dame athletic department winds up dead under mysterious circumstances, amateur sleuth and academic Roger Knight, and his brother, Phil, a P.I., investigate the apparent murder. The trouble: no suspects. No suspects, that is, until the day of Fred's funeral, when several likely candidates suddenly appear at the poor man's wake. First, Mary Schuster, daughter of a faculty widow, shows up at the event dressed all in black, with the startling announcement that she and the deceased were secretly in love. Then the controversy doubles when another woman arrives with a huge diamond ring on her finger, claiming to have been Fred's intended. Could it be that unassuming Fred Neville was actually involved with two women, in secret and at the same time? Roger thinks not, and finds a notable piece of evidence to back up his hunch when a secret stash of Fred's poetry turns up, clearly written with a single woman in mind. Unfortunately, the object of Fred's intense love remains unnamed in his verse. Suddenly, both women are suspects in a vicious crime. But it's up to Roger to plug into the campus gossip grid and, with a little help from Phil, not to mention his vast knowledge of just about everything that happens on campus, determine the exact chain of events that led to murder. Set against the backdrop of an exciting Notre Dame basketball season, Irish Coffee will delight fans of both Notre Dame lore and of Ralph McInerny's impeccably plotted mysteries.

Father Dowling is a dedicated parish priest who happens to have a knack for unraveling the mysteries of the real world as well as those of heaven, but the latest puzzle to catch his attention—-the disappearance of Wallace Flanagan—-doesn't seem to be a mystery so much as a dirty little secret. By all appearances, Flanagan, the heir to a lucrative concrete business, skipped town with his mistress more than ten years ago, although no one talks about that out of respect for his abandoned wife. But appearances go right out the window when his mangled—-and recently live—-body is found wedged into one of his father's cement mixers.If Flanagan's unexpected return and immediate death aren't enough to shake a few skeletons from their closets, childhood friends and lifelong enemies have started trickling home to Fox River, Illinouis, a town outside of Chicago. All of them had a stake in his disappearance, but which one would murder a man who was...

Father Dowling has been serving as parish priest and resident sleuth at St. Hilary's for a while now, but he's no lifer, and there's plenty that he doesn't know about the old guard. So when a stranger comes to Fox River who isn't a stranger to anyone but him, he has to rely on his prying housekeeper to tell him that the mystery man is actually a well-known murderer. Ten years ago, Nathaniel Green's wife was dying of cancer, and after a short remission she relapsed into a coma. That small sliver of hope so utterly dashed must have been too much for him because when the nurses came to check on her they found that he had taken her off of her life support. Green's return divides the community, but the more Father Dowling ponders the moral questions and reinvestigates the case, the more he wonders if Green committed any crime at all.With parishioners up in arms, Father Dowling has to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a conviction is no proof of guilt in Ash...

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

Once the college football season draws to a close for the Fighting Irish, there is little reason to ride out the winter in South Bend, Indiana. Those who can leave do, but P.I. Philip Knight stays on at Notre Dame when the university asks him to discreetly investigate a rash of threatening letters that have been sent to a number of administrators, including the new football coach, who resurrected the team in a single year.While conspiracy theories are as prevalent as the cold, Philip and his brother Roger think the letters are probably a prank or possibly a student paper's attempt at yellow journalism but nothing more. Then a controversial professor's car is set on fire, a man is found dead on campus, and the Knight brothers find themselves hot on the trail of a killer in Ralph McInerny's tenth mystery set at Notre Dame.

Father Roger Dowling is a busy man. He's got the ambitious and all-encompassing task of running St. Hilary's Parish, dealing with his busybody housekeeper, Mrs. Murkin, and counseling his flock with his characteristic blend of faith and compassion. He's not complaining, but it's no surprise that even a superior priest like Father Dowling needs a break now and again. So off he heads for a week-long retreat in Indiana on the quiet grounds of an old Catholic religious order, where he can meditate, reflect, and pray for a quick recharge of his waning energy.Unfortunately, Father Dowling's spiritual retreat turns into a baffling murder investigation when a dead man is found in a grotto on the order's grounds with the handle of an ax protruding from his back. Complicating matters is a long-running real-estate dispute that has pitted the brothers of the order against the previous owners of the huge and valuable piece of land on which their sanctuary sits.Who could have killed the man and why, and does it have something to do with the high-stakes mind games being played out between the parties vying for the land? No one's too sure, but what is clear is that Father Dowling is once again at the center of it all in another winning entry in a mystery series that's become an institution.

When South Bend, Indiana, Detective Phil Knight meets Boris Henry, an enthusiast of the historic Father John Zahm, a Notre Dame priest who was once involved in theoretical disputes during the 19th century, he wants to introduce Boris to his brother, Notre Dame's Professor Roger Knight, who shares a passion for this legendary man. As expected Boris and Roger have much to discuss. But then some of Boris's collection of rare Zahm artifacts go missing and Boris turns up dead, and the Knight brothers team up to uncover the truth behind the murder in Irish Gilt, an absorbing addition to this series by the author of the beloved Father Dowling mysteries.