The Widow's Mate

A collision between the past and present dislodges some hard and hidden truths that Father Dowling must uncover if he's going to catch a killer in Ralph McInerny's The Widow's Mate, an absorbing and suspenseful mystery that is sure to please Father Dowling's many fans. Father Dowling is a dedicated parish priest who happens to have a knack for unraveling the mysteries of the real world as well as those of heaven, but the latest puzzle to catch his attention---the disappearance of Wallace Flanagan---doesn't seem to be a mystery so much as a dirty little secret. By all appearances, Flanagan, the heir to a lucrative concrete business, skipped town with his mistress more than ten years ago, although no one talks about that out of respect for his abandoned wife. But appearances go right out the window when his mangled---and recently live---body is found wedged into one of his father's cement mixers. If Flanagan's unexpected return and immediate death aren't enough to shake a few skeletons from their closets, childhood friends and lifelong enemies have started trickling home to Fox River, Illinouis, a town outside of Chicago. All of them had a stake in his disappearance, but which one would murder a man who was already all but dead? And would kill again to keep a dead man's secrets?