Customer Reviews

Death Takes Up a Collection (Sister Mary Helen Mysteries)

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I love Sister Carol O'Marie's characters and her books. This again is a good book with warm characters, but it was so predictable. I could easily turn back to the appropriate page and see where and when and how the person had the opportunity to do the murder. It was all too obvious. And an enclosed murder is rather old-time. I found this one boring, though I would read another of O'Marie's books anytime. She needed to work a better plot.

I really enjoyed this mystery for many reasons. The author presented her characters is such a way that I found myself caught up in the turmoil with them; the mystery, especially in the beginning, the path it took, and how she dealt with each suspect and lead impressed me. I found Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen to be charming, intelligent and entertaining.

The enjoyable, irreproachable Sisters are back and much to their and Inspector Gallagher's displeasure, Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen find themselves the focal point of a murder when Monsignor Higgins of St. Agatha's dies after eating a piece of the Irish Soda Bread they had presented him for St. Patrick's Day.

We all know the Church, through individuals, is just as susceptible to the immoralities of life as any other establishment, which is understandable since mankind is in charge, but that doesn't make it acceptable, in fact it's judged more harshly. Sister Carol Anne taps into this sort of situation successfully; she shows us the thoughts and reactions of those betrayed and how willingly they hold on to their own emotional burdens as fuel for their self-indulgent actions. Besides being a great mystery, Death Takes Up A Collection is certainly a remarkable interpretation of human emotions.

Elderly, white-haired Monsignor Joseph Higgins is killed off on page 32, rather too late to generate any interest. Like most of the stock characters in this mystery, he's unbelievable, inconsistent, and surprisingly uninteresting. Supposedly he's embezzling church funds and ending an affair with a fiftyish ex-Sister. An old man brags (yes, brags) to Higgins that his divorced daughter is committing adultery, and then is furious that Higgins denies Communion to the woman. Since Higgins is so venal an unbeliever, it's unlikely he'd bother. But the father and daughter are as unbelieving if they think adultery equals a state of grace! The best character is the hated housekeeper, who is consistently described as extremely old after 40 years' service -- she's about 55, having come from Ireland in 1958 as a schoolgirl planning to continue her education. The heroine, Sister Mary Helen, is 78 but not regarded as old. Such odd prejudices provide the only interest.