Customer Reviews

Till Death (Lib)(CD)

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Till Death, the latest of William Kienzle's books, was truly a deathly boring experience. Till death is nothing more than a summary of current Catholic church law regarding the celibacy of priests and those who "Do" and "Don't". Kienzle is noted for his mysterious plots with a Catholic twist. The only mystery here was why the book was written in the first place. If this reader had wanted a disertation on the current theological view of pastoral life, a read of cannon law would have held more intrigue. Kienzle's characters were flat and predictable. Fr. Koesler, who has reached the status of a retired priest, has indeed retired his membership in the Sherlock Holmes fan club. I'm sure that even his coffee was far more potent and enjoyable than this book. This avid Kienzle reader is EXTREMELY disappointed in his latest offering. Maybe Kienzle should have retired his word processor when Fr. Koesler retired from St. Joe's.

Im not quite done this book yet (about 1/2 through) but so far it's pretty bad. I've stopped expecting a good mystery from Kienzle since the mid-80s but still enjoyed his books as character studies. His earlier books were mostly good mysteries with interesting comments about the Catholic Church. This one reads like a religous text book with no mystery in sight. I will finish the book (though it won't be easy)...hopefully the next Kienzle book will be more like his earlier work. This series has been steadily declining since the mid-90s and with this latest book i think it's hit bottom.

I would like to nominate Ms. Regan for 5 stars for her steller review of Kienzle's new book, "Till Death." Ms. Regan, with wit and insight, enlightens us quite rightly about how disappointing Kienzle's new book is. Fr. Koesler who is retired at 70 needs to spend some time with Sr. Mary Helen in San Francisco. The change would do him good and he might learn something from the retired sister of crime. Ms. Regan however, did fail to mention that the publisher Andrews McNeill has given us the worst quality of book imaginable. It practically falls apart when you first open it. Kienzle should be ashamed to have his name placed on a book of such poor quality.

I have only begun reading the Father Koesler series a few weeks ago, after stumbling upon them in a used bookstore. I agree with the previous reviewers that this volume is less of a mystery than a study of Canon Law. However, I still found it interesting.

As a Catholic born just prior to the close of Vatican II, I find this whole series interesting as a revelation of what was on the minds of the priests and sisters of those days. I had Sisters for my teachers until high school. I was an altar boy during the transition phase; ie the Latin was gone but we still had the Communion rail. Soon after, the Communion rail was gone and the guitars arrived. Now, in some Catholic Churches, the Tabernacle is gone. People generally stopped genuflecting before the Tabernacle even before it was removed.

In our zealous quest for "accessibility", the baby has been discarded with the bath water. As Father Koesler progresses in life, he identifies himself as a liberal; he counsels an abortionist in "The Greatest Evil" that "somewhere in abortion is serious sin." As he tells her, she has thoughtfully informed her conscience, so therefore her own conscience is the supreme authority.

The characters serve as representatives of different camps within the Church. In every case, the priest who is not necessarily enamored of Vatican II is always portrayed as the "bad" guy, the villain, the jerk who makes peoples' lives miserable. The priests who ignore Canon Law or apply it in a looser fashion are the good guys.

Koesler himself, I believe, represent the Church as a whole. He has nothing against the priests who leave, or even Father Casserly who lives a double life with Lil for years, yet he himself never has a dalliance with a woman. He quietly applauds priests who marry un-annulled couples, yet he never does so himself. He still loves (rightly so) the priests who leave the priesthood, yet he himself soldiers on. He notes everyone else hardly ever wearing clerical clothes, but he always wears a cassock and Roman collar.

From a demographic perspective, how would the 80-something year old Father Koesler feel about present day Detroit? He frequently worried in the past about the "population explosion"; the global warming-type scare of the 70's. Whites and Catholics dutifully listened to the liberals and birth-controlled and aborted the birth rate down to bare replacement rate. But the followers of Mohammed didn't get the memo. Today in Dearborn, the Muslim call to prayer is recited much more frequently than the Rosary.

All in all, the series is an interesting memoire of the Church in the last 40 years, encapsulated by a lovable central core of characters.

This story reminded me a little of Mind Over Murder, the third book in the series, and a little of Murder, She Wrote. You meet some characters and you know something's going to happen to one of them, but who? And what? And why? And who's going to be the one responsible? Yes, the editing could have been better and I would have enjoyed the book more, but I'd read it again in preference to many others out there.