HOLY ORDERS
PEDOPHILE PRIESTS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
A mystery novel by William Redding.
ISBN # 0-595-00160-2
(In The Press - Read the Book Reviews)
The United States criminal justice system is in conflict with that of the Vatican. This novel discloses the power of the Catholic Church over the government and the media in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. You may be surprised which system prevails in the end and which system is the most effective.
Sergeant “Slat” Sczlatski of the Pulaski, Wisconsin Police Department is pitted against Tony Tattaglia, a special agent for the Vatican. The Vatican wants to extract a pedophile priest from the country before the church is embarrassed by an indictment.
The race is on. Though fiction, the book covers issues such as: ethical dichotomies within the Catholic Church; sexism; racism; and homophobia.
Writer'S Digest 2002 Competition ReviewWhat a richly rewarding novel HOLY ORDERS is. Expecting the conventional detective story, I was pleasantly surprised by the issues the novel confronts and the realism and the complexity of its storytelling. And I was glad to see it wasn’t just another cookie-cutter crime drama. The author’s long experience as a police and a P. I. Is used very well here, and HOLY ORDERS carries a sense of believability and authenticity that is too often lacking in books of this genre. Comparing/contracting the justice machinery of the civil system versus that of the Catholic Church would be a heady, difficult task for any experienced writer, and Mr. Redding pulls if off here with aplomb --while keeping his story chugging forward thorough a suspenseful murder investigation. There are “dangerous” issues at play here --prejudice, police corruption, homophobia, race, pedophile priest, the sex-murder of an altar boy, the Vatican’s attempted blanketing of a potentially damaging indictment, the struggles between idealism and realism, etc. – but at no point does HOLY ORDERS feel exploitative or risk reducing itself to just another potboiler.
Slat “Sczlatski” and Tony Tattaglia are terrific characters (any character who is a “special agent” for the Vatican is automatically an eyebrow raiser) The problem to be solved is well-crafted and presented as a fine page-turner that may not be as taut and lean as it could be, but still never stops the reader in his or her tracks. The characters, especially Sczlatski, are not presented as larger-than-life cutouts. They are ordinary folks who have to work for a living, and so are considerably more believable and engaging that they might be if another – even a well established – crime novelist had written HOLY ORDERS.
So, what impresses me most about HOLY ORDERS? That it’s obvious that a lot of thought and care went into this story and the result is a crime thriller that’s as much from the heart as it is from the head and gut. A welcome combination.
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Send Bill Redding email at:
nemesis7@mindspring.com
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