A Blackie Ryan Novel
8 total works
The Vatican has just assigned auxiliary Bishop Gus Quill to the Archdiocese of Chicago over the violent protests of Archbishop Cronin, and the not-so-silent protests of Bishop Ryan. Bishop Quill is under the illusion, one might say delusion, that he has been sent from Rome to replace the good Archbishop when in fact Rome was dying to get rid of him because of his incompetence. Immediately on arriving in Chicago, he manages to disappear while riding the L Train, and it is up to Blackie to find him. As Archbishop Cronin says, "The Vatican does not like to lose bishops, even auxiliaries."
And thus begins the search for the missing bishop who no one really wants to find.
Of course, none of this is too much for the intrepid little Bishop Ryan. He faces these problems squarely and, with the kind of deductive mind reminiscent of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, manages to find solutions to some of the most baffling mysteries he has ever encountered.
Yes! Sent there by his estimable but irascible boss, The Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Sean Cronin.
Blackie gets a call from his friend, the newly elected Democratic President, Jack Patrick McGurn-whom the media has seen fit to call "Machine Gun McGurn"-but of course the call is interrupted by the autocratic Cardinal Cronin. Cronin, without consulting Blackie, sends him off to the White House to solve a poltergeist problem. Ghosts in the White House? Of course.
Blackie encounters a great deal more than ghosts: an evil spirit out to get the President, a right wing conspiracy, and four beautiful women, any one of whom could be contributing to the mischief on the White House.
How Blackie solves the problem of the ghosts and the conspiracy, and perhaps even finds a beautiful wife for the lonely, recently widowed President makes The Bishop in the West Wing the best Blackie Ryan mystery yet.
