Bishop in the Old Neighborhood (Blackie Ryan Series) » (Reprint)

A native of Chicago, Reverend Andrew M. Greeley, is a priest, distinguished sociologist and bestselling author. He is professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, as well as Research Associate at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. His current sociological research focuses on current issues facing the Catholic Church-including celibacy of priests, ordination of women, religious imagination, and sexual behavior of Catholics.

Father Greeley received the S.T.L. in 1954 from St. Mary of Lake Seminary. His graduate work was done at the University of Chicago, where he received the M.A. Degree in 1961 and the Ph.D. in 1962.

Father Greeley has written scores of books and hundreds of popular and scholarly articles on a variety of issues in sociology, education and religion. His column on political, church and social issues is carried by the Chicago Sun Times and may other newspapers. He stimulates discussion of neglected issues and often anticipates sociological trends. He is the author of more than thirty bestselling novels and an autobiography, Furthermore!: Confessions of a Parish Priest.

"Blackwood, there's trouble in the old neighborhood! Murder in the sanctuary of the Church!"

The church in question is St. Lucy's, a humble edifice at the heart of a venerable Chicago neighborhood now suffering the throes of gentrification. St. Lucy's has long stood as a bulwark against evil and change, which some in the community have often seen as much the same thing.

Now three dead bodies have been left in the sanctuary, stripped, mutilated, and shot through the head, execution-style. A warning to those who would remake the neighborhood—-or to St. Lucy's charismatic monsignor, who has made a few enemies of his own?

Dispatched by his cardinal to investigate, Bishop "Blackie" Ryan fears that the atrocious murders are only the beginning of a campaign of terror directed at this particular church. But to solve the mystery, and to banish the evil gathering over the community, Blackie will need an unexpected assist from his own long-dead father, as well as the help of Declan O'Donnell, a savvy young cop with a touch of the second sight, and of Camilla Datilo, a radiant assistant state's attorney of Sicilian origins.

The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood is another charming and compelling page-turner by bestselling author Andrew M. Greeley.

Publishers Weekly

The first half of Greeley's fifth Bishop Blackie Ryan book (after 2003's The Bishop Goes to the University) drags a bit, but the pace picks up when Blackie starts digging into the past of Father Mikal Wolodyjowski, the charismatic priest at St. Lucy's, a Chicago church where three corpses have turned up in the sanctuary. Blackie discovers that Wolodyjowski was peripherally involved with the odd deaths of six college kids 60 years earlier, a mystery that proves to be more engaging than the initial deaths at St. Lucy's. Unfortunately, the novel's other main subplot the blossoming romance between a cop and a lawyer borders on the far-fetched. The pace, melodrama and gravitas with which young love blooms will strike any reader under 40 as laughable. And Greeley spends too much time musing on the tensions that separate Polish, Irish and Italian Catholics from one another. Still, Blackie, with his quick wit and his fondness for Bushmill's, is his usual delightful self, and his many fans will enjoy this sojourn in the old neighborhood. Agent, Raphael Sagalyn. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.