Solemn high murder

When the Reverend Simon Bede, aide to the Archbishop of Canterbury, arrived in New York one cold and gray afternoon, he looked forward to a pleasant stay with Dunstan Owsley, the wealthy and influential rector of the Church of St. Jude the Martyr. But within twenty-four hours, late on Ash Wednesday afternoon, Owsley's Lenten meditations ended abruptly when he was bludgeoned to death in St. Jude's Lady Chapel. Left to pick up the pieces, Bede suddenly finds himself surrounded by some highly disgruntled parishioners -people who disagreed with Owley's theology or politics, or both: a young curate coming up for promotion; a commune of fanatic yet varied Pentecostalists; and a crotchety benefactress who has been waving around five million dollars. Amid his other jobs in New York — at the Cathedral, the Executive Council, and the United Nations — Bede does a bit of sleuthing in the lavish rectory, and in the evenings dips into *Black Mass*, a best-selling novel that, for some reason, has this particular parish rocking on its heels. And finally, while the police are still combing the streets of Greenwich Village for the murderer, Bede, with the help of a very attractive photographer, gets a posthumous look at Owley's private journal and a damaging letter — neither of which quite jibes with the man Bede thought he knew.