This item is currently not available. If you have this item,
Join and post it to share with others.
The Bishop and the Missing L Train is the ninth entry in Andrew Greeley's deservedly popular Father Blackie Ryan series. Auxiliary Bishop Augustus Quill, recently posted to the Chicago Archdiocese, could not be described as a loved man. His nickname, bestowed upon him by fellow seminarians, is "Idiot." Despite his relatively high position, one that implies significant intelligence, wit, piety, and compassion, the man seems lacking in all departments save piety. In fact, so disliked is Quill that someone is willing to stop at nothing--at least nothing short of absconding with an entire subway car, bishop included--to keep him from his appointed rounds.
Sean Cardinal Cronin, the Archbishop of Chicago, is no more a fan of Quill's than anyone. Still, the act of losing a bishop (or, more precisely, not retrieving an absconded-with bishop) would not be smiled upon by Rome. Fortunately for Cronin (and fans of humorous, clever, well-written amateur-sleuth mysteries everywhere), Bishop Blackie Ryan is on his side.
"We cannot permit this, Blackwood!"
"Indeed."
"Auxiliary bishops do not slip into the fourth dimension, not in this archdiocese."
"Patently."
"Especially they do not disappear on L trains that also disappear, right?"
"Right!"
"You yourself have said that we will be the prime suspects, have you not? Don't we have powerful reasons for wanting to get rid of him?"
"Arguably," I sighed. "However, as you well know, in the best traditions of the Sacred College we would have dispatched Idiot with poison."
As with any amateur sleuth worth the paper he's written on, Ryan has a cadre of variously talented (and oft-related) professionals--cops, psychologists, reporters, etc.--at his beck and call. And good thing, too, for there are that many and more likely suspects--about the same number, arguably, as there are reasons to devour the entire Ryan series.The Bishop and the Missing L Train is another ecclesiastical lulu.--Michael Hudson
Like, totally...lay off the "hip" language, Father! I will admit that I admire Fr. Greeley in general, and that he always has very interesting plots. (Well, there's SOMETHING there or else I wouldn't continue to pick up the books!)
However, the typical affectations he uses are annoying enough that if you're not a fan, you might find the book a bit wearing on the nerves. There are only so many "cutes" and "weirds" and "like, totallies" that one can endure in good faith, y'know?
As with most of his plots, it's a good. An annoying bishop and a train car go missing. Not that anyone would really MISS the bishop that's lost, but still, the proprieties must be observed and it is quite a conundrum as to what happened.
The book follows the stories of not only Blackie Ryan, but as is typical in the Bishop series, it also follows the stories of others involved in the story from their own point of view. In this book particularly, I found their stories to be of more interest than going back to Blackie's POV.
I can't say that it's a bad book; it's not. I just wish, however, that Fr. Greeley would quit trying to be SO Irish, SO cute and SO "with it." It just rings false after so much of it.
Gus is oh so real If you're a left-wing Catholic or Episcopalian, you'll love this book. Gus Quill is a caricature, but his kind does exist, and you'll find yourself nodding along with Bishop Blackie. However, celibates really shouldn't try to write romance- mysteries work quite well without romantic subplots.Forget the Bishop...Find the Train As your run of the mill kidnapping mystery, this is not exactly a cliffhanger. Hiding a railroad car in Chicago requires a rather large suspension of reader credulity, and fortunately the search for the equipment is not the centerpiece of the book. The more intriguing issue is the whereabouts of its passenger, a relatively new auxiliary bishop known by most of his peers as Idiot Quill. There is no absence of suspects, so what we have here is an inner city Murder on the Orient Express.
This untimely disappearance of a prince of the Church causes no little embarrassment for the Cardinal of Chicago with his superiors in Rome. So, as is his wont, the Cardinal turns over this dirty affair to his fix-it auxiliary bishop, Blackie Ryan. That Ryan is a bishop is itself a mystery: he eschews popery, as they would say years ago, ministers to teenagers [his rectory is full of mouthy girls answering phones and violating confidentiality], and spends considerable time making sick calls-when is the last time your bishop visited you in the hospital?-wearing a Michael Jordan jacket, no less. He is so well connected to every ranking cop, judge, reporter, doctor, and psychiatrist in Chicago that solving crimes for this bishop is more a matter of managing his cell phone than rummaging with the CSI unit.
The art of reading Greeley novels used to be deciphering the author's ecclesiology du jour, or what he thought about the American Catholic Church at any given time. There is still some element of that challenge in this work. Here the ugly nemesis is the annulment process-Quill had made a career of mismanaging annulment appeals in Rome-but there are other Greeley signatures as well: spiritual healing through sexual encounter, the failure of priests to visit the sick, whiskey, powerful women professionals, interminable pedigrees of Chicago neighborhoods, and angry feminists come to mind.
But age is beginning to tell. Father Greeley, I fear, describes a church life that passed away a generation ago. Blackie's rectory reeks of clerical hospitality, the days when the priests gathered for nightcaps to recount the day's adventures. Today one priest frequently pastors several parishes, and usually alone. In Father Greeley's Chicago the fix is in for the Church: a Roman collar will make a parking ticket magically disappear. No such coziness exists anymore in the present atmosphere; "the Meghan" [Ryan's teen employees] would all be fingerprinted and subjected to background checks.
Greeley's church novels are becoming less mystery and more timepieces. No greater evidence is needed than the heart of the kidnapping plot itself in this book. In the real world of today's Church, the motive would be totally irrelevant.
