Abracadaver, A Father Dowling Mystery by Ralph McInerny
Abracadaver, A Father Dowling Mystery by Ralph McInerny A magic show at St. Hilary’s Parish sets the ball rolling for murder. It’s the dead of winter in Fox River, Illinois and we soon learn the community is upset by the disappearance of the wife of a well to do real estate developer. At first, the newspapers depict a loving marriage and grieving husband but as the weeks eked by with no news for the reporters, they turned on the husband and implicate him as having an affair with a coworker. Is it true? Did he bump off his wife to make way for a new missus? Or did the “new woman” get rid of competition? Father Dowling finds himself in a mess of rumors and deaths. Can he help the police or will he become the next victim? I didn’t particularly care much for this book, which came as a surprise to me. I was all set to sink my teeth into Father Dowling in book form, having religiously watched the show as a kid. The book had a little humor (what was there was good) and little character depth