The Grass Widow

By Ralph M. McInerny

Subjects: Catholics, Father Dowling (Fictitious character), Fiction, Clergy, Catholic Church

Description: A young blonde, Clare O’Leary, comes to see Father Dowling and cheerfully tells him she’s hiding out in Fox River, having left her husband, a well-known disc jockey in nearby Waukegan—he has taken up with another woman and periodically jovially announces over the air that he is trying to let out a contract on his wife. <br/> The next day Clare O’Leary is found dead in her motel bed. Strong suspicion of suicide, which Father Dowling cannot believe. <br/> Little by little a cast of entertaining characters emerges: Twinkie Zeugner, the giant piano player at the motel; Wilma Goudge, head of the motel’s Adonis & Aphrodite Physical Fitness Center; Larry O’Leary, the recently bereaved widower of the blonde; and Andrea Koehler, his attractive lawyer. Among other little gems, we re-acquaint ourselves with Mervel, the newspaper reporter; our old friend, Mrs. Murkin; and Captain Phil Keegan and his sterling aides: Lieutenant Horvath and Officer Lamb. <br/> When a clear-cut murder—a gangland shoot-out—occurs, it is somehow related to the apparent suicide of Clare O’Leary. The plot and action thicken until, in an exciting denouement, Father Dowling find himself in deathly struggle with Clare’s murderer. <br/> All in all, a fine addition to Ralph McInerny’s Father Dowling Mysteries.