The Bishop and The Missing L Train (A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery) [Hardcover]

Andrew M. Greeley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 2000

Millions of Blackie Ryan fans will be thrilled with his return. Bestselling novelist Andrew M. Greeley has captured the imagination of the reading public with the improbable Bishop Blackie Ryan, who works for the aristocratic, haughty, sometimes arrogant but often slyly good humored Sean Cardinal Cronin, the Archbishop of Chicago.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

The lighthearted Bishop Blackie returns with this thoroughly beguiling entry in Greeley's series detailing the misadventures of venerable Bishop John Blackwood Ryan, the erudite assistant to Sean Cardinal Cronin, archbishop of Chicago. An embarrassment to the Vatican, oafish and mean-spirited Most Reverend Augustus (Gus) Quill is appointed by Rome to Cronin's archdiocese as an auxiliary bishop, infuriating Cronin, who calls Quill by his seminary nickname: Idiot. But when the unwelcome Quill disappears, along with the L train he was riding on, the sardonic, benevolent Bishop Blackie is in charge of finding him and unraveling the mystery of why the L never arrived at the terminal. Intertwined with the Quill enigma are the dual quandaries of Tommy Flynn Jr., a young trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who's smitten with Notre Dame's All-American star women's soccer captain, Christy Logan, and irresistibly sexy Jenny Carlson, an abused ex-wife of a Nobel also-ran, who is having a steamy affair with her boss. Tommy's lustful fantasies and Jenny's struggle to find happiness are waylaid when they both become suspects in the investigation, each having made public threats against the missing bishop. When Blackie finds Quill in an alley drugged with heroin, he sets out to track the villains. Bemused observers of Greeley's trademarkAan arguably adolescent, definitely titillating preoccupation with soft-core sexAwill not be disappointed. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (July 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312868758
• ISBN-13: 978-0312868758
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,138,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Blackie yet - "Indeed!", August 11, 2000

By 

TundraVision (o/~ from the Land of Sky Blue Waters o/~) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bishop and The Missing L Train (A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery) (Hardcover)

Father Andrew Greeley's Bishop John Blackwood Ryan (a/k/a "Blackie") is back!

An auxiliary Bishop and the Chicago Transit Authority L train in which he was riding have gone missing. The missing Bishop is Bishop "Idiot" Quill - a pompous puppet of all the sillier positions of the Roman hierarchy. The nickname is a wink and an opportunity for Father Greeley to take literary potshots at Rome - a lighthearted continuing illumination of his theological and sociological convictions as revealed in his works - including _Furthermore!: Confessions of a Parish Priest_.

This morally uplifting tale interweaves the lives of clerics and parishioners along the way of solving the mysterious matter of Bishop "Idiot's" disappearance. This reader will admit that I uttered an agonized moan upon the mention of Cindasue (see my previous review of _The Bishop and the Three Kings_) but, "Hallelujah!" she never surfaces enough in this book to open her mouth ;-)

I laughed out loud during an interchange between Bishop Blackie and the former chairman of Bishop "Idiot's" parish council: "He (Bishop "Idiot") told us that we had no canonical powers and no right to meet except at his request. He warned us to leave or he would call the police. We left."

"And went not gently into that good night?"

"I beg pardon?"

"You all were quite angry and so you raged against the failing of the light?"

The parish functionary still doesn't "get it" - but we do, Father Greeley. You are an American treasure whose intelligence and wit bode well against the failing of the light.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read in this fun mystery series, July 14, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bishop and The Missing L Train (A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery) (Hardcover)

The religious leadership of the Archdioceses of Chicago is stunned by the Vatican decision to place ignoble Auxiliary Bishop Gus Quill among them. The Archbishop protests the appointment of the "Idiot", but is ignored. Even aid Bishop John "Blackie" Ryan states his opposition to Gus' arrival.

However, soon irony takes a spin as Gus and the entire L train vanish without a trace. Blackie begins an investigation to locate the missing bishop and the other riders. As he begins his inquiries, Blackie wonders who hates Gus so much that other innocents have been taken along for the ride. Meanwhile the police conduct their search based on a radically different hypothesis.

The lighthearted Bishop Blackie investigations are always entertaining fluff that anyone who wants a humorous, enjoyable mystery tour of Chicago will relish. The latest tale, THE BISHOP AND THE MISSING L TRAIN, is fun to read because of the wonderful subplots that spin back into the main theme. Blackie remains charming and the secondary cast, especially the Lioness and the gambler, provides a wonderful joy ride of the Second City. Andrew M. Greeley's latest Bishop Ryan novel is an amusing winner.

Harriet Klausner

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Forget the Bishop...Find the Train, July 23, 2001

By 

Thomas J. Burns (Apopka, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bishop and The Missing L Train (A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

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.