Holy Orders - Cast of Characters - About Bill Redding
"Holy Orders" Book Reviews CNI Milwaukee(You may read Reader Reviews, as well as post your own review at Amazon.com.)
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Police procedural delivers the goods
Reviewed by Elizabeth Burton
CNI Milwaukee
By Nan Bialek
December 7th, 2000
Former area Police Chief puts his badge to paper.There is a bit of world-weary street cop that still sticks in the throat of William Redding, enough to put a stinging edge on the stories he is compelled to write.
Redding, who was South Milwaukee's Police Chief from 1982 to 1987, said working on his mystery novel "Holy Orders" helped him sort out the emotional roadblocks still lingering after a lifetime in law enforcement.
"It was great therapy. It helped me put a lot of stuff behind me", Redding said.
That "stuff" includes the political issues that inevitably swirl around the office of chief. At the times he took the reins in South Milwaukee, Redding said he was not prepared to cope with that aspect of the job.
"Once you're a Chief, you 're no longer a cop," he said. "You have to deal with the Politicians. And they really burned me out."
Redding said it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on the duties of his office. He went through the motions expected of a community leader, showing up as guest speaker at local Lions Club meetings, preparing his remarks five minutes before he took the podium. But his heart was no longer in it.
"I wasn't potically astute and I just let it get to me," he said. "It got to the point where I couldn't go to work."
So, Redding said, he resigned under pressure and retired to Bradenton, Florida, with his wife, Ann. He began to look back on his experiences in police work - the people he arrested, fellow officers and their families, people he admired and those who taught him some tough lessons.
Religious plot
The plot in "Holy Orders," one in a trilogy of mystery novels Redding is writing, involves a cover-up of pedophilia among Roman Catholic priests.
In those days, Redding said, the Catholic church herarchy handled its wayward priest problems internally.
"The ones I was aware of, the police never got involved. The police would just as soon the church take care of it," he said.
If the characters in "Holy Orders" ring true, it's because they are drawn from bits and pieces of real people Redding has known and committed to memory.
The novel's protagist, Sergeant Casimir "Slat" Sczlatski, incorporates some of Redding's real-life experiences.
The character of Dawn Mazurski is based on a young woman Redding met in the course of his police work, whose parents were African American and Polish. Even at the time he met her, he said, "she was such a dynamic character, I just knew I had to use her."
The novel's gangster boss, Billy Boyd, is based on a real-life gambling tycoon, whom Redding describes as a "friendly opponent for 23 years."
The Police Chief in "Holy Orders" evolved from a personality Redding knows intimately. "Chief Turski, thats me," Redding said. "It's not the same ending, but very close."
New home, new hobbbies
Redding is writing a happier ending for his own life. He is simultaneasly working on several new books, with plots springing from his own experiences and the stories of people he has met at his job at a Florida hospice.
"When you spend 30 years as a cop, the only time somebody says 'thank you' is if you find a lost child. But these people are so grateful, I just love it. I get a heck of a lot of satisfaction from it." he said.
In his work at the hospice, Redding has left the tiring grind of local politics far behind. He still has deeply-felt emotions, but now uses them to connect with the patients he sees every day.
With the publication of "Holy Orders," Redding can rid himself of the tightness in his throat and finally, blisfully exhale.
Meet some familiar characters in 'Holy Orders'You may not recognize the characters in William Redding's taut novel 'Holy Orders' by name. But anyone who lives in the Milwaukee area has run into them in one way or another.
You've probably seen Detective Sergeant Casimir "Slat" Sczlatski at a neighborhood coffee shop, stubbing out a cigarette and tossing out a pocketful of quarters for the tip. You''ve seen Father Patrick Daley celebrating Mass at his Slavik south side parrish.
Maybe you've never shaken hands with Police Chief Martin Turski, but you've met him in the local paper. He's the target of sour-faced Alderman Archie Dunn, a small-time politican with a habit of writing terse memos and an ugly grudge against women.
Nothing raises the hair on Dunn's back more than the thought of women on the local police force. Especially strong women like Detective Dawn Mazurski, half black, half polish, and all business. And Dectective Jenny Herschel, who tries to keep her feelings about Slat to herself.
When two cherubic altar boys are viciously murdered, Cheri Duncan, the leggy and ambitous Pulaski Press reporter, is all over the story. She can expect no cooperation from the Pulaski Police Department.
Slat, meanwhile, is dusting off the facts surrounding a 30-year-old murder case, trying to clear the name of his friend and mentor, Sam Tyrone. Like too many of Slat's fellow cops, Tyrone has taken the 'Smith and Wesson cure.'
The investigation pulls Slat through a shady underworld of corruption and cover-ups. He soon reconnects with smooth-talking gangster boss Billy Boyd and his hulking sidekick, Mountain Top. Boyd may live like a King on the other side of the law, but he has his own set of ethics. The reader is left to decide who really has the patent on morality.
But Redding is at his best when he writes dialogues. In conversation, the defining traits of his characters pop to the surface. Each of the cast of misfits starts to breathe as the reader "hears" them speak.
"Holy Orders" touches on issues of race and homophobia, and offers a not-so-pretty glimse into the internal politics of organized religion, from the perspective of a fictional detective who has seen it all.
Early on, some of the novel's characters may seem a bit stereotypcial. Those imperfections are remedied as the story moves on and the intricate plot's threads weave themselves into a surprising ending.
Along the way, Redding takes the reader on a ride-along threw a side of the city seldom seen. Some landmarks are familiar - the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, St. Luke's Hospital, Mitchell International Airport - and some are thinly disguised.
There are no high-minded literary pretentions in "Holy Orders" and that's the charm of the book. Redding tells his tales with stark, straight-forward detail, in language as black and white as a south side squad car.
Reading "Holy Orders" is like having a satisfying conservation with a cop over a boilermaker at the corner tap. He gets up to leave, tosses a tip on the bar, and you hope you run into him again. You know he's got stories to tell.
Green Bay Press-Gazette
By Jean Peerenboom
December 3rd, 2000" ... I heartily recommend "Holy Orders" (Writers Club Press, $19.95; ISBN: 0-595-00160-2). His multidimensional plot involves a pair of murdered altar boys, a vanished priest suspected of pedophilia, the apparent suicide of a retired detective, allegations that the detective had been on the take and widespread gambling in their little burg. Slats Sczlatski thought he had seen everything in his 15 years on the Pulaski Police Department. But murder in his church? Slat and his fellow detectives begin to dig until they discover connections between the altar boys' deaths and the death of the retired cop. The dark tale of survival is a story of betrayed values and unlikely adversaries."
Police procedural delivers the goods
Reviewed by Elizabeth Burton (the_blue_iris@hotmail.com)When his chief asks Sergeant Slat Sczlatski to look into a decades-old murder, he isn't sure he wants to know the truth. There is a possibility that his mentor and friend, Sam Tyrone, may have been involved, may even have been one of the shooters. Could that have been why Sam put a bullet in his own head, or had he simply succumbed to the emptiness of his life?
As if that weren't enough of a problem, someone is molesting and killing young boys in the city of Pulaski, and there is a good deal of evidence to show that the perpetrator is a priest. Only Slat and his crew of detectives are constantly being stymied in their investigation by an opportunistic politician who has it in for the chief and anyone else who gets in his way.
The secret to writing a good police procedural is in the characters. All the convoluted plots in the world won't make up for a lackluster bunch of stereotypical cops. Fortunately, author Bill Redding knows his own people well and he presents them in this debut novel with an unerring eye for their virtues and their vices. At the same time, he avoids drenching them in the kind of neurotic angst that seems to be all too prevalent in the current run of procedurals.
Rather, he brings to mind the Old Master himself, Ed McBain, yet without any sense of derivation. Slat Sczlatski is a cop of the Gary Cooper school, dedicated, sincere and yet fully aware of the foibles of the men and women who work for him. He isn't totally comfortable being in charge, but he accepts the responsibility rather than rebelling against it.Nor does Mr. Redding make his "bad boys" one-dimensional sleazeballs. There are no sadistic serial killers here, wallowing in gore. These are the kinds of criminals you would expect the average policeman to encounter--gamblers and confidence men and impulse killers and, unfortunately, child molesters. They are people the reader wants to dislike, and yet Mr. Redding manages to make them either halfway likeable, partially sympathetic or both. This is not to say they don't deserve what they get. It just means Mr. Redding is well aware that there is good and evil in all of us, and that the difference between "them" and "us" isn't necessarily as wide a gap as we'd like to think.
Holy Orders is a well-constructed, fast-paced visit to a city full of real people doing what real people do. It is that much-too-rare commodity in these days of fascination with the sociopath, a police procedural you can believe--Law & Order rather than Seven. If you like your procedurals sharp, realistic and filled with characters you might expect to meet on the street, then this is definitely the book you're looking for. And, hopefully, this won't be our last encounter with Sgt. Sczlatski and the Pulaski PD.
Holy Orders - Cast of Characters - About Bill Redding