Murder in Ordinary Time (Sister Mary Helen Series #4) » (Reprint)

SISTER CAROL ANNE O'MARIE has been a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet for the past fifty years. She ministers to homeless women at a daytime drop-in center in downtown Oakland, California, which she co-founded in 1990. She has written ten novels featuring Sister Mary Helen.

Just one bite of that irresistible Christmas cookie and Christina Kelly, Channel 5's leading investigative reporter, was on the air—dead. The odor of bitter almond told Sister May Helen the cause of the death: cyanide. Somewhere in the studio was the wily killer; it was a person everyone knew.

Had Christina's investigations led her to her dead end? Or was the fatal cookie meant for someone else: the notorious womanizer; the hard-drinking floor manager with something to hide; or perhaps Wicked Wendy, who certainly fit her nickname? Or was the intended victim the intrepid nun herself?

Heaven help her as Sister Mary Helen charges in where angels fear to tread to trap a killer before he strikes again.

Publishers Weekly

The unusual insight into human nature gained by followers of the religious life is again demonstrated by Sister Mary Helen, semiretired from teaching at San Francisco's Mount St. Francis College and last encountered in The Missing Madonna . Appearing on a local TV news show, Sister Mary Helen finds herself plunged into a murder case when investigative reporter Christina Kelly dies on the air, poisoned with a cookie mysteriously delivered to the studio. Although police inspectors Dennis Gallagher and Kate Murphy (the latter in the last month of pregnancy), her old friends and antagonists, order her not to interfere, Sister Mary Helen feels she is morally obligated to solve the murder when the Greek mother of the victim asks her to avenge her daughter. Interpol comes into the picture when it turns out that Christina had been investigating a ring that smuggled Greek antiquities, but Sister Mary Helen's knowledge of human nature uncovers an older source for the tragedy. Sister O'Marie's unsensational and warmhearted portrayal of convent, family and police life, tied into a tidy mystery with modern trappings, makes for a satisfying read. (Oct.)