Customer Reviews

The Bishop and the Missing L Train (A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery)

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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.

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

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.

If you're a Greeley fan, you'll like this one as well. A much hated bishop disappears ALONG WITH AN ENTIRE SUBWAY CAR. Apparently this trick was pulled off in real life. In any case, where is he, and what could the motive be? The story alternates point of view, chapter by chapter, and includes a young man with relationship issues who receives counseling from Father Ryan. Fast-paced right through to the end, clearly aimed at Catholic readers but universal enough for all to follow.

Andrew Greeley has written another winner with this book. I love the way he intertwines two or three different stories. In this novel a very dense new bishop with his own agenda is kidnapped while riding an L train. The train, the driver, and the bishop disappear. The bishop has no shortage of people who hate him, so Bishop Blackie has a difficult time finding the kidnappers. The author has a real feel for bringing his characters to life. I don't know how college students in Chicago talk, but they don't sound like that in NY and haven't since the 80's. Other than that, I really enjoyed this novel.

On its face this narrative appears to be a mystery about the disappearance of a newly appointed auxiliary Bishop and the "L" train upon which he rides. The novel, however, is more about the Bishop than his disappearance. The book focuses on the lives and foibles of its characters and the joy of living. Since I enjoy people, I like this book.

The Bishop and the Missing "l" Train covers three general themes. The first topic is the human suffering that is caused by a pedantic and often almost inhuman annulment process in the Roman Catholic Church. The second is the love stories of developing romance between Tommy Flynn and Christy Logan, and Jenny Carlson and her and Ned. The third thesis is the overwhelming unconditional love of God for "Her" beautiful creatures (Greeley insists that God is female and I tend to agree).

The annulment question focuses primarily on the handling of appeals. Bishop "Idiot" Quill, when he served with the Sacred Roman Rota, an appeals panel that is the third level annulment court, reversed every annulment he adjudicated. This extremely conservative approach angered the tribunal above him (The Apostolic Signatura, which is like the Supreme Court of the Church), the priests who had helped couples process the annulments, and some of the married persons who were denied annulments.

The romantic love stories are also curative cases where the participants need to be healed to love. Tommy must overcome his fear of women. Beth needs to feel accepted by her new family. Jenny struggles with her sexuality.

God's unconditional and forgiving love is clearly displayed by both Bishop John Blackwood Ryan, call him "Blackie", and Mary Kate Ryan Murphy, a psychiatrist who is Blackie's sister. When handling sufferers in their respective ministries these wonderful characters willingly listen, care for the people, and share a healthy and loving view of God's kingdom.

I enjoyed the simple mystery of the missing "L" and the discoveries about the missing Bishop. I reveled in the marvelous characters and their psychological and spiritual growth. Most of all I celebrated God's expression of unrelenting love for Her children.

I will admit that I admire Fr. Greeley in general, and that he always has very interesting plots. (Well, there's SOMETHING there or else I wouldn't continue to pick up the books!)

However, the typical affectations he uses are annoying enough that if you're not a fan, you might find the book a bit wearing on the nerves. There are only so many "cutes" and "weirds" and "like, totallies" that one can endure in good faith, y'know?

As with most of his plots, it's a good. An annoying bishop and a train car go missing. Not that anyone would really MISS the bishop that's lost, but still, the proprieties must be observed and it is quite a conundrum as to what happened.

The book follows the stories of not only Blackie Ryan, but as is typical in the Bishop series, it also follows the stories of others involved in the story from their own point of view. In this book particularly, I found their stories to be of more interest than going back to Blackie's POV.

I can't say that it's a bad book; it's not. I just wish, however, that Fr. Greeley would quit trying to be SO Irish, SO cute and SO "with it." It just rings false after so much of it.

I love the people who Greeley created to live in Bishop Blackie's world--the Megans, the Lioness and her teammates, Blackie's remarkable siblings, the Cardinal and his sibs--so much that I re-read these stories for the delight of re-experiencing them afresh. What baffles me is how Greeley is snagging my copies and changing them so I find a fresh delight in each readng. Must be magic! AY

I love Andrew Greeley's novels because he lets us laity know that someone else recognizes the broken way the institutional church behaves ~~ and yet somehow encourages us to keep trying and loving our damaged mother. Others have explained the plot well so I'll just add the special insight Greeley slips into this book at the end. Cliche would say "its not over until the fat lady sings". I think Greeley says that one's chances to be a decent human being ~~ no matter how damaged~~ isn't over until God gives up [which God never does].
I pray Fr Greeley recovers completely from his injuries.

This was a very entertaing read; I recommend it to new and old fans alike. I had no clue as to the mastermind but all the clues were there.