Death Takes Up a Collection (Sister Mary Helen Series #8) » (6 CDs)

Sister Carol Anne O'Marie has been a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet for the past forty-five years. She ministers to homeless women at a daytime drop-in center in downtown Oakland, California, which she co-founded in 1990. Death Takes Up A Collection is her eight novel featuring Sister Mary Helen.

Readers have come to delight in the murder-solving exploits of septuagenarian Sister Mary Helen and her cohort Sister Eileen, two nuns with a nose for nabbing killers. Publishers Weekly calls the Sister Mary Helen Mysteries "refreshingly different" and a "heady mix of humor and suspense." Once you meet this spry, clever sleuth, you'll want to make a habit of reading her adventures again and again.

A corrupt clergyman meets an unholy death...

Monsignor Joseph Higgins liked, along with wine and women, the finer things in life-so much so that he may have dipped into the church funds to finance his good tastes. But would that be reason enough to kill the crooked clergyman? Someone had poisoned the pastor-and there was no shortage of likely suspects, from his surly housekeeper to several prominent parishioners. Now Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen must delve into this sacrilegious slaying and bring a killer to justice.

Library Journal

This mystery marks the eighth appearance of amateur sleuths sisters Mary Helen and Eileen as their paths intersect with yet another murder. This time the unfortunate deceased is Monsignor Joseph P. Higgins, pastor of a local parish. The good sisters are delivering Irish soda bread to the benefactors of their college when they interrupt a tense and angry parish counsel meeting led by the Monsignor. In this strained atmosphere, the sisters, Higgins, and the parish counsel take tea together, and of course later the pastor is discovered dead from poisoning. Along with members of the counsel and the Monsignor's household staff, the sisters are among the last to see him alive and fall into the category of suspects. As such they are well placed and well motivated to ferret out the identity of the killer from among a plethora of motives. The reader, Agnes Herrmann, provides an adequate narrative voice, but her characterizations come off as cartoonish, which give the program a slightly jarring sense of farce. Fans of the series will appreciate this; otherwise, libraries should purchase only as demand warrants.--Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll., Dubuque, IA