The Bishop Goes to the University - A Bishop Blackie Ryan Novel

"See to it, Blackwood," says the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, and Blackie Ryan, the Cardinal's auxiliary bishop, doesn't exactly jump (he never jumps), rather he moseys down to Washington, D.C., where one of his friends, Jack Patrick McGurn, called "Machine Gun McGurn" by the media, has surprisingly just been elected president and needs his help.

Blackie's first confrontation is with Washington bureaucracy; the powers that be don't want to give Blackie a pass to wander in and out of the Oval Office at will. The bureaucracy blinks first and Blackie gets his pass.

Blackie, who can do anything, has been called on to deal with ghosts in the White House. Yes, poltergeists. But there are more problems in the White House than ghosts. A conspiracy abroad in the land results in two men trying to blow up the White House. Happily, Blackie has one of his intuitive moments and manages to get a picture of the terrorists, and he didn't forget to take the cap off his camera. He also got the license number of the getaway car. Blackie also has to deal with four enchantingly beautiful women who, without knowing it, may be responsible for the strange ghostlike behavior of an unhappy spirit. None of these things does Blackie find daunting. He stumbles about his business and waits for enlightenment to come.

The Bishop in the West Wing is one of the finest of the Blackie Ryan stories .We meet again a great cast of characters: Sean Cronin, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, who is turning out to be one of the treasures of modern American detective fiction; Mike Casey, the cop turned painter, and Dr. Kate Murphy, Blackie's beautiful and terrifyingly smart sister. With this cast of characters the poor ghosts deserve our pity.

Andrew Greeley was a guest at the White House three times during the most recent administration and his keen eye and powers of observation are put to remarkable use in this latest Blackie Ryan mystery/adventure.

"Blackwood, there's trouble in the old neighborhood! Murder in the sanctuary of the Church!"

The church in question is St. Lucy's, a humble edifice at the heart of a venerable Chicago neighborhood now suffering the throes of gentrification. St. Lucy's has long stood as a bulwark against evil and change, which some in the community have often seen as much the same thing.

Now three dead bodies have been left in the sanctuary, stripped, mutilated, and shot through the head, execution-style. A warning to those who would remake the neighborhood---or to St. Lucy's charismatic monsignor, who has made a few enemies of his own?

Dispatched by his cardinal to investigate, Bishop "Blackie" Ryan fears that the atrocious murders are only the beginning of a campaign of terror directed at this particular church. But to solve the mystery, and to banish the evil gathering over the community, Blackie will need an unexpected assist from his own long-dead father, as well as the help of Declan O'Donnell, a savvy young cop with a touch of the second sight, and of Camilla Datilo, a radiant assistant state's attorney of Sicilian origins.

The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood is another charming and compelling page-turner by bestselling author Andrew M. Greeley.

The bestselling priest & novelist Andrew M. Greeley continues the tales of the intrepid Bishop Blackie Ryan with this absorbing & suspenseful mystery, set in France, of a missing beloved television priest.

Not just an ordinary priest but a priest/television superstar, idolized by the people of France, loved by everyone except, of course the French hierarchy, the church, state and the Paris television community.

The Archbishop of Paris, familiar with Bishop Blackie Ryan's impressive sleuthing skills, asks Blackie's boss, the Archbishop of Chicago Sean Cardinal Cronin, for help in finding this missing priest. As usual, Cardinal Cronin resolves the matter with a brusque "See to it, Blackie."

In Paris, Blackie meets a young and beautiful woman begging for money at the door of the church of St-Germain-des-Prés. When he hires her as a translator, she turns out to be an excellent Dr. Watson and a brilliant musician as well. She is at his side as Blackie learns that neither the Church nor the police are eager to have the saintly priest returned, and once the public discovers the disappearance of their beloved priest, the miracles start-and nothing scares the Church more than miracles.

Undaunted, Blackie and his beautiful sidekick defy uncooperative Paris police, an unbending church, and reluctant witnesses to find the bizarre solution to one of the most fascinating puzzles he has ever encountered.

It's beginning to look a lot like an American Christmas: unpleasant relatives, miserable travel, a slobbering dog-and one "harmless American of Irish origins," Jack Flanigan, who is reluctantly falling in love with a young Russian woman studying at Harvard.

She's spending Christmas alone in a foreign country, so he invites the dark-eyed beauty home to Chicago for the holiday. Even though it isn't Christmas in the Russian Orthodox calendar, she accepts!

What happens when she gets to Chicago and caught in the maelstrom of commercialized Yuletide? Enough to say, there's a tree, and a feast, and midnight Mass, and a gaggle of contentious Flanigans of all ages-who have the merriest Christmas ever-and nothing will ever be quite the same for any of them.

Especially for Jack.

Father Andrew M. Greeley, one of America's most popular and trusted storytellers, has long charmed readers with his continuing chronicles of the crazy O'Malleys, an irrepressible and resilient Irish American family caught up in the rush of modern American history. The previous novels in the O'Malley saga, including A Midwinter's Tale and Second Spring, have taken the longtime Chicago residents from the early postwar era through the turmoil and malaise of the 1970s. Now, in Golden Years, Chucky O'Malley and his ever-growing clan enter the Reagan years---even as a series of painful shocks tests the family's strength as never before.

The death of Chucky's elderly father brings the entire brood together to mourn, but what should be a time of unity is disrupted by the increasingly erratic behavior of Chucky's unhappy and emotionally unstable older sister, igniting a family crisis that ultimately threatens the lives of both young and old O'Malleys. Furthermore, as if their own struggles are not enough to cope with, Chucky and his wife, Rosemarie, also find themselves called upon to help an old high school friend whose beloved wife and daughter have disappeared inexplicably. To find Brigid "Bride" O'Brien and her innocent child, Chucky and Rosemarie must untangle a shadowy mystery that stretches from the bogs of Old Erin to the darkest chapters of the cold war. . . .

There will hard days ahead but, with love and more than a bit of faith, the O'Malleys will bury their dead, dry their tears, and try to make the best of their . . . Golden Years.

The enthralling third novel in the chronicle of the O'Malleys in the twentieth century.

The fourth of the O'Malley chronicles is narrated by the ravishing Rosemarie, dedicated wife of our intrepid and trouble-prone hero, Chucky Cronin O'Malley. Destined to be compared to the Lanny Budd novels of Upton Sinclair and the Chicago novels of James T. Farrell, September Song follows the crazy O'Malley saga from Chucky's appointment as Ambassador to Germany by President Kennedy (the youngest Ambassador in history), to his resignation over his violent disagreement with President Johnson, to his in-your-face involvement in Selma, Alabama, the Chicago Democratic Convention, and the Vietnam War.

Chucky can't stay out of trouble, and his loving and devoted wife Rosemarie is often, if not always, by his side. Raising a family and showing up at the hot trouble spots of the world seems to be Chucky's destiny. Greeley recalls the turbulent and history changing events of the 1960s with fondness and clarity.