Here I am, a bona fide professional writer, and I’m stuck for words to describe the loveliness of today’s weather. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art less humid and more temperate….” I should have taken the day off and gone to the state fair and fired questions about Bohemian Grove at Michael Medved. But, as Yogi Berra once sagely remarked, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
If you think you know about the Father Dowling mystery books because you used to watch Tom Bosley in the ridiculous TV version some years back, be assured that you don’t. Father Dowling is a priest named Father Dowling, and he does live in the Midwest and he does have a nosey housekeeper, but that’s about the extent of the similarity.
The original, authorized Father Dowling is a sort of clerical Sherlock Holmes (he’s tall and thin and smokes a pipe), but kinder and more inclined to suffer fools (and sinners). He was once a rising young star in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but job pressures led to alcoholism, and the church sent him to Fox River, Illinois, a transitional suburb of Chicago, as a sort of second chance-cum-penance. But he discovered that parish ministry is his real calling, and he loves taking care of his little flock. Except for the remarkable number of unsolved murders that seem to crop up. (Also it should be noted that there are no roller-skating nuns to be seen anywhere.)
The drama in Last Things centers on the conflicts and dysfunctions of the Bernardo family, whose patriarch is Fulvio Bernardo, owner of a string of local greenhouses. Fulvio has only been moderately honest in his business dealings, and has been serially unfaithful to his pious wife, Margaret. But now his health is failing, and his children are gathering for the end.
The children include Raymond, who was once a promising young priest, but he ran away with a nun, with whom he now lives out of wedlock in California. Andrew is the underachieving middle brother who teaches English at a local college and has a live-in as well. Jessica is a successful novelist, much envied by Andrew, and remains a believer. She’s planning to write a novel based on her family’s story, and there’s an aunt who is much alarmed at that prospect, going so far as to ask Father Dowling to persuade Jessica to drop the project.
But it’s Andrew who gets into big trouble, when an insufferable colleague blames him for holding back his career, and starts a campaign of harassment against not only Andrew but his whole family. And when the colleague is found murdered in the street, well, who do you think comes under suspicion?
Father Dowling works it all out, of course, relying on his profound understanding of human motivations and sins. Along the way he also helps Raymond come to terms with the guilt he’s been carrying (and denying) ever since his defection.
All things taken together, I think I prefer Father Dowling stories to Father Brown stories. That’s heresy, I know, but although I’m crazy about G.K. Chesterton about 80% of the time, I always found the FB mysteries a little facile, a little too neat. They seem to me analogous to an archer shooting his arrows first and then painting targets around them. The Father Dowling stories are richer and more humane, less didactic (which isn’t to say there aren’t moral and theological lessons).
As a Protestant, of course, I find points in the stories where I disagree with some of the detective’s basic assumptions about Christianity. But it doesn’t interfere much for me, and the quiet, peaceful presence that Father Dowling imparts to these stories make reading them a comfort and a delight.
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