Tag Archives: J. R. Mathis

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Redemptive Return,’ by J.R. and Susan Mathis

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Book Number Three in the Father Tom Mysteries is The Redemptive Return. This review ought to be taken with a grain of salt, though, because my emotional reaction to it probably colors my judgment.

Father Tom Greer, as you may recall from my previous reviews, is a priest who entered the ministry late in life, having been a husband and a widower already. Before that, he was engaged to Helen Parr who (by one of those coincidences which are a little too common in this series) is now a police detective in the town of Myerton, Pennsylvania, where Father Tom also serves, in his own way. The fact that they are still attracted to one another is a complication in both their lives.

One day Tom gets a call from his sister Sonya, with whom he rarely communicates. It sounds like she’s running away from someone, and she desperately wants Tom to find something (he can’t hear what) and help somebody named Chrystal.

Tom isn’t sure what to do about this call. Sonya is a drug addict (supposedly in recovery now), and he’s gotten such calls from her before. They’ve never meant anything. He lets it go.

Shortly thereafter he hears from his mother. Sonya is dead. Her body was found in a dumpster.

And it’s all his fault.

Tom doesn’t want to go home, with all its unresolved issues, but he knows he must. What surprises him is that Helen shows up next to him on the plane, having taken personal leave to help him out.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Because of my own personal history, I found The Redemptive Return hard to read. So I’m incapable of saying whether this element (dysfunctional family dynamics) of the story is handled well or not.

However, it seemed to me the book suffered from what I’m sure others before me have called “Bond Villain Syndrome,” where the villain pauses long enough in the process of killing the hero to explain his/her criminal genius at length – giving the cavalry time to show up and save the day.

Finally, my big problem with the book was the resolution (at this point in the ongoing saga) of Father Tom’s relationship problem with Helen. An arrangement is worked out with the approval of his bishop. I’m not a Catholic, but I found it improbable in the extreme. Both ecclesiastically and psychologically.

I won’t pan The Redemptive Return, but I think it’s relatively weak. Readable, though.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Penitent Priest,’ by J.R. & Susan Mathis

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I suppose this will happen more and more as I grow old and fuzzy-brained, and the list of books I’ve read stretches longer than the unabridged dictionary. I picked up a set of the first three books in the Father Tom series for Kindle, only realizing toward the end of the first volume, The Penitent Priest, that I’d already read it. And reviewed it here. And forgotten it completely.

The Amazon page says this is a revised edition, so maybe the changes were extensive enough to mitigate my embarrassment. I note that my main concern with the book the first time through was the number of coincidences in the plot. I felt the same way this time, but it didn’t bother me as much. Perhaps that’s one of the problems they addressed in the revision.

In any case, Father Tom Greer is a Catholic priest in Pennsylvania. He came to his vocation late in life, following the murder of his wife in Myerton, the town where they lived. The crime has never been solved. Shortly thereafter Tom cut all local ties and left town, eventually attending seminary, getting ordained, and being put to work as an archivist.

But now (the book is narrated in the present tense, something I dislike on principle. Though I can’t say it actually decreased my enjoyment any) the archbishop has assigned him to fill in for the priest at St. Clare’s Church in Myerton. Then one day, in the confessional, someone tells Tom something that makes him believe they witnessed his wife’s murder, and might even be responsible. Then he gets a look at his late wife’s laptop, which a friend has been holding, and learns from her e-mails that she had a stalker. But when he tells the police detective in charge of the case, she says that’s not enough for her to take action on.

This encounter is complicated by the fact that the detective turns out to be a former girlfriend of Tom’s, one he nearly married before he met his wife.

What I liked about this book – the prose is excellent. The dialogue is natural, smart, and engaging. The characters are believable.

What I disliked (though not as much as on my first reading) — the number of coincidences in the plot. They interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief.

Still, considering that this is a “clean” novel, without profanity or sex and with excellent moral values, I was very impressed with The Penitent Priest. Our hyper-Protestant readers may not consider a Catholic novel a “Christian” work, but I think most any Christian can read this book and appreciate its values and even (for the most part) its theology.

So I recommend it, all things considered. I enjoyed reading The Penitent Priest. I think the authors have talent and good instincts.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Framed Father,’ by J. R. Mathis

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In the second book of the J. R. Mathis’s Father Tom mysteries, The Framed Father, our hero is called back to the town of Myerton, Pennsylvania, where he recently solved the cold case murder of the woman he was married to before he became a priest. He left the parish in the hands of Father McCoy, a callow young priest who seemed the most innocent and inoffensive of men. But accusations have reached the archbishop that Father McCoy has been carrying on with his attractive administrative assistant. So Father McCoy is sent off into retreat, and Father Tom must take over at St. Clare’s once again. But when scandal turns to murder, Father Tom will again team up with Helen, his ex-fiancee, now a police detective (who is improbably open to amateur help) to try to save the young priest’s name and liberty.

I reviewed the previous book in the series, The Penitent Priest, as morally upright and well-composed, but weakly and improbably plotted. I thought The Framed Father somewhat better. There are still too many coincidences, but I didn’t guess the solution this time.

No bad language, heavy violence, or sex scenes to caution you about. Matters of the Catholic faith are treated seriously, and there are good depictions of crises of faith. Father Tom is a little too much the intuitive detective for my personal taste, but the book wasn’t bad.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Penitent Priest,’ by J. R. Mathis

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I probably wouldn’t have purchased J. R. Mathis’s mystery novel The Penitent Priest if I’d noticed that its tagline said “A Clean Murder Mystery.” (Puts me in mind of the old joke about “a nice old-fashioned murder with no immorality in it.”) When the first recommendation a book offers is its lack of dirty words and sex scenes, it’s not usually a guarantee of literary quality. But The Penitent Priest turned out better than I would have expected.

Father Tom Greer came to the priesthood late in life, after the murder of his beloved wife. So he’s somewhat nervous when the archbishop assigns him to temporarily replace the parish priest at St. Clare’s in Myerton, Pennsylvania. Myerton is where he lived as a married man and buried his wife, and where he abruptly left a number of old friends when he dropped out of sight afterwards. So he has some personal fences to mend.

But when an unseen stranger tells him secrets no innocent person should know in the confessional, Father Tom knows he has the opportunity to finally identify his wife’s killer. But he’ll also have to face his own fears and guilt.

I was impressed with the writing in The Penitent Priest. You rarely run into a novelist these days who can parse a decent English sentence and spell words right. The plotting, unfortunately, was less wonderful. As is not uncommon among starting authors, author Mathis has laid on too many coincidences. Why should the archbishop assign Father Tom to precisely this parish, considering his personal history and the fact that he’s still a person of interest in his wife’ murder? And is it really likely that the woman to whom Tom was engaged before he met his wife should show up as a police detective here?

Also, the big surprise at the end of the story might as well have been printed on the title page in big red letters.

But because I liked the writing, and because Father Tom is a good character, I bought the sequel.