Andrew Greeley's Happy Are The Clean Of Heart

Lisa Malone is an Irish Catholic girl from the Chicago. She could sing; she was good-looking; so she went to Hollywood and she succeeded. Now it's 1984 and she's nearly 40 and when she comes back to the old neighborhood, they're happy and envious in about equal measure. Make that measure unequal: more envious.

And on her first night back, somebody beats her to within an inch of her life in a hotel. Now she's in a coma.

Her estranged husband is found standing over the body, the cosh in his hand. He 'says' he interrupted somebody. But he's not the only suspect. There's her agent, who felt like he's the one that made her, her understudy for an upcoming Christmas special, her co-star on that special, a woman from the neighborhood, writing a biography with Lisa's approval,  a Mobbed-up bank vice president who administers Lisa's charitable foundation, her jealous older brother, and a nun who knew Lisa as a girl and whose organization is also the recipient of Lisa's charity.

And, well, Fr. John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan had opportunity, too, and everybody knew he was in love with her when they were in high school. 

Then there's a second and a third attempt on her life in the hospital.

Blackie Ryan is the hero of a mystery series by Andrew Greeley, himself a priest as well as a professor at the University of Chicago. This is the second in the series, though there is an earlier non-mystery novel with Blackie Ryan as a major character. It takes until that third attempt for Blackie to figure out the villain. "Indeed," as Blackie himself might say.

There's some fun things in it for a Chicagoan. Roger Ebert and Richie Daley make appearances. (That's Richard M. Daley, former mayor of Chicago to you.) Richie is Cook County state's attorney that year. The events take place on the near north side, Chicago's Water Tower, the John Hancock building, Holy Name Cathedral, the Drake Hotel, the Playboy Building (as Blackie can barely bring himself to say, not the Playboy any longer). Lisa Malone's daughter plans on St. Ignatius for her high school, my alma mater.

I've read a bunch of the Blackie Ryan mysteries. My dad liked them, and I read them after he did, frequently because I gave him the new one for Christmas or his birthday. I can't say that this was one of the better ones. I find the early ones a bit overwritten, and Greeley's not the psychologist he wants to be. He pared them down later, and they were better for it. Oh, well...

The novel comes out in 1986 and the movie Amadeus has clearly influenced the plotting.

But it was one of the books I put on my Twenty Books of Summer list!

And it counts for Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge:

Vintage Mystery, Silver, Knife: a knife is used in the third attempt.

Andrew Greeley's Happy Are The Meek

Happy Are The Meek is the second outing from 1985 in Andrew Greeley's John Blackwood "Blackie" Ryan mystery series. In this volume, Fr. Blackie is a mere Monsignor. In later mysteries, he advances to bishop, and then archbishop. Had Greeley lived long enough, Fr. Blackie would no doubt have become Chicago's mystery-solving cardinal, and possibly even the first murder-solving Pope.

I've read a bunch of Blackie Ryan mysteries completely out of order; they're set in Chicago, my home town, and so, like the V. I. Warshawsky series, for example, they have a certain appeal for me. My father was fond of the series and after he'd read one, I read it. Not infrequently he received the book as a gift from me...

Most of the events in this one take place in Long Beach, Indiana, a resort town for wealthy Chicagoans on the shore of Lake Michigan. (I've never been there.) Wolfe Tone Quinlan is the victim, he owns the house where the crime takes place, the suit of armor, the sword of which is the murder weapon, and it's not inappropriate to say he owns half the suspects, who in one way or another are all dependent on him.

Quinlan is a complete villain. He's abusive to his family (and by the end, we learn even worse.) His partners are criminal or abused. He's a drunk. He supports some sort of creepy devil-worshiping cult. By the end of 40 pages, I was ready to murder him myself. I understand the convenience for plotting of having a thoroughly detested victim, but by then I was half-hoping for an Orient Express-type solution to this one. He was so awful, it was difficult to read about him.

Greeley alternates chapters in Fr. Blackie's voice with chapters in the voice of other characters. The other problem with the novel, I thought, was the other chapters. Blackie Ryan is knowing, arch, amusing. He tends to natter on about his extended Chicago Irish clan who play useful and funny roles in the mysteries: Mike the Cop, his sister Mary Kate the psychiatrist, his various nieces and nephews who refer to him as Uncle Punk. But many (too many) of the early chapters in this were narrated by Lawrence Burke, Quinlan's financial adviser, and desperately and guiltily in lust with the widow. Catholic guilt is completely believable, but it does not amuse.

My preference is also generally for cozy, which the Blackie Ryan mysteries generally are, and this one veers into the grisly.

So all in all, not one of the better Blackie Ryan outings. Without being systematic about it, I would say Greeley improved in the series, but then the very last ones got a little sloppy. The middle ones are the best.

But there's a brunette in a bikini on the cover. I'm not really sure who she's supposed to be, but it takes place in a beach town, so I guess that's OK:

Silver Age. Brunette. My Reader's Block's Mystery Scavenger Hunt.

Also this one has been aging on the shelves here since 2014 when I bought it at the University College Book Sale from the 6 for $5.00 mystery table. So it also counts for My Reader's Block Mount TBR Challenge.