Customer Reviews

Happy Are Those Who Mourn (Blackie Ryan mystery)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My first Blackie Ryan novel was "Happy Are The Peacemakers." While I enjoyed it greatly it was not quite what I expected. Set in Dublin, scented with a perpetually heavy Irish brogue, and narrated by someone other than the Bishop himself, it wasn't quite my cup of tea. I had already bought "Happy Are Those Who Mourn," and was worried that I would continue to be a bit disgruntled. The good news for me is that "Those Who Mourn" is much more the Greeley novel I was promised, and that I am completely satisfied.
Blackie Ryan, auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, is a wry and iconoclastic defender of the faith who often serves the Cardinal as investigator and chief meddler into suspect affairs. In this case Blackie is asked to investigate the apparent haunting of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the up-scale community of Woodbridge. The death of the previous parish priest, Charles McInerny, is suspect, and the current incumbent, Peter Finnegan, is harassed on all sides by an irascible ghost. The Cardinal is not superstitious and wants to make sure that the ghost does not become a news story.
Blackie arrives to discover that the spirit in question may not be the worst of the parish's problems. For 25 years the finances of the church have been handled laxly and some 10 million dollars or more seems to have evaporated. Blackie's investigations lead him to those who were close cronies of the old priest. The banker Gerald Reed and his beautiful wife Evelyn are involved somehow. In addition, the eccentric Dr. Curtin and his spear bearing wife are certainly suspect, as well as Arnold Griffin, a commodities trader. Blackie finds that all of these players are somehow in cahoots with each other, and that much of the story dates back to Pusan in Korea. McInerny's murder turns out to be the kind of closed room mystery that the Bishop specializes in. With all these complications it is no surprise when a new rash of deaths occur.
One comes to like Bishop Ryan right from the start. He has a slightly sarcastic style that masks a generous nature and a brilliant mind. His first person narrative is full of spark and insight, and he is honest with the reader without giving anything away. He is the perfect foil for Andrew Greeley who seems to really care for his characters and takes the time to bring them to life. These tales are 'comfy' mystery stories, in that there is little real violence and much to enjoy. The reader can look forward to a good puzzle, humorous narrative, and a satisfying ending. If you've been reading a lot of noir fiction lately, try a Greeley tale for blessed relief.

Father Andrew M. Greeley knows how to tell a story, and tell a story he does in this three-hundred page trek into late-twentieth-century Roman Catholic Chicago as he imagines it ought to be. True this one-time parish priest may not pen "great literature" but he sure leaves you feeling he gave you your money's worth during the time spent in his richly decorated biome. I've never quite grasped why the author of this book was once a figure of controversy when he seems staid enough to me, as well as a loyal ambassador of his religion, but can't imagine why anyone would kick at Greeley's theology or prose in Happy Are Those Who Mourn.

Here Greeley's alter ego and frequent protagonist, Bishop Blackie Ryan, is dispatched by his old friend and longtime boss Sean Cardinal Cronin, to one of the Archdiocese of Chicago's affluent and normally placid backwaters, the sylvan suburb of Woodbridge, to investigate reports of a bizarre haunting in effect at the local parish of Saints Peter and Paul. While Cardinal Cronin is a hard-core skeptic unwilling to entertain notions of ghosts in one of "his" churches, the cerebral Ryan, though a logical man, is too Irish at heart to instantly dismiss as explicable all claims of supernatural goings on. Arriving at the parish shortly after the death of its formidable priest and keeper of many secrets, Father McInerny, Ryan is simultaneously confronted with a classic "locked room" mystery, reliable reports of what seem genuine paranormal phenomena which began shortly after McInerny's death, and the undeniable fact that the preternaturally afflicted parish seems to be missing millions of dollars, misplaced over the course of many years.

As he unfolds his character-driven mystery, Greeley brings a number of interesting people onto center stage, including a local banker's wife, who once used deadly force to defend human life in a time of war. It's also an obvious pleasure to Greeley to have a bit of fun at the expense of the Woodbridge Police Department, a xenophobic, arrogant lot unwelcoming of an amateur sleuth from the big city, who of course runs rings around them start to finish.

This novel never loses its pace at any point in the story it tells, and while we do follow Blackie Ryan through a few unavoidably long and twisting journeys before we arrive at the truth to things, the conclusion comes with a satisfying "a-ha" that mostly puts things right again in Cronin's (and Greeley's) Chicago.

i don't know why this book isn't as "popular" as other Greeley works or Blackie Ryan novels I should say. This is classic Bishop Blackie stuff.Great story, well written and fluid from start to finish. Just plain old entertaining.Father Greeley has a knack for bringing the story to life giving the reader the sense that they're "there" as a "third" party or "fly on the wall" you might say. I'm guessing that the negative reviewer had never read any Blackie Ryan story's prior to reading this one which left him out of the character loop i'm guessing. Whatever the case it's an inaccurate and unjust description of this work. I knew nothing of the characters when I began reading Greeley (The Bishop Goes To The University) and walked away from that first experience with the feeling that the characters we're old friends. In short, this book was a fun and entertaining read and made life a little more bareable for a few days.

I'm not sure how this got two other good reviews. I picked this book up a few days ago and I've had a few laughs at how poor the story-telling is. It seems like this author has broken all the rules when it comes to telling a good story. There is next to no characterization and what little the author attempts is flawed and makes the protagonist laughable. The plot is nearly non-existent. The protagonist records every useless detail he sees, absolutely nothing furthers the "plot". The 'supernatural' element of the story was disappointing. The protagonist is a priest and yet he is not spiritual, he is more interested in sports and modern technology. His calling would've been better as an accountant rather than a spiritual leader. The dialogue is incredibly bland and repetitive. Every few paragraphs the protagonist says the exact same one-word sentence and it seems like it was in effort to make him look clever but only shows him to be unoriginal. Within two chapters alone, the protagonist must have responded with "Arguably" about five times to other characters, so annoying! All of the minor characters get even less characterization than the protagonist. I'm not even sure why they're really that relevant to the plot. I would recommend the author write at least a second draft next time before trying to pass such a poor work of literature off as a novel. I've never read anything like this before: the narrative is bland, the plot meanders, the foreshadowing is clumsy, the descriptions are shallow, the characters are flat and static, the dialogue is squeamishly bad, there's vague undertones of racism and misogyny, etc. the list goes on. The fact that this book was published at all gives the impression that anyone can get any piece of crap they please on the market. The only way this book would be of use to anyone is as an example of how NOT to write a story.