Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Death In the Shadows, a Father Gilbert Mystery by Paul McCusker

Book description:

When Father Gilbert traded in his detective's badge for an Anglican priest's collar, he never expected that murder would follow him. Even a church conference in the quant seaside town of Englesea offers no escape.

The vision of a dead woman, water dripping from her body, draws Gilbert into a mystery that seems straightforward, but soon entangles him in a power struggle between corrupt players who want to dominate the illegal sex trade in town. The victims are pawns in a game that extends to London and across international borders.

The dead cry for justice and Father Gilbert fights against forces hiding in the shadows. Can he champion the truth in time to stop more people from dying?


My review:

  Some years back, Focus On the Family released The Father Gilbert Mysteries as par of their radio drama series. I loved the CDs, and was happy to see McCusker come out with some in book form. I read and reviewed the first one, and enjoyed it a lot. This book is the second of the Father Gilbert Mysteries in paperback.

 Death In the Shadows is totally different from the first book. In this one. Father Gilbert is away from his home at a church convention, so it is a totally different setting. The author took a bold step with the plot and subject matter, using the sex trafficking/prostitution trade as the backdrop for the mystery. This made for a sobering, yet entertaining and suspenseful read. And I should add McCusker managed to pull it off without getting graphic or writing anything that could be problematic for the reader.

  A priest helping to solve a murder is a novel idea, especially a priest that is a former police detective, but it makes for some great reading. The seeing dead people is a weird aspect, but it works for the story, and adds an extra creepy and suspenseful aspect to the story.

  I like it when I can figure out who the guilty party is, but I also like it when I can't...... and this book kept me guessing all along. It has a complicated enough plot to not give much away, but not so complicated that the reader gets lost.

 I very much enjoyed reading this book, and had a difficult time putting it down when I needed to. I am hoping there are more to come in this series, and am looking forward to reading more.

 **Note, the books are not the same stories as on the CDs I mentioned, but are totally different stories.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

About the author:


Paul McCusker is the creative content director for Focus on the Family. He has been a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and drama since 1979. His work includes over forty published novels, full-length plays, dramatic sketch collections, and song lyrics. For the Adventures in Odyssey series alone, he has written over 200 half-hour radio episodes, eighteen novels, and two screenplays for the best-selling animated videos. He has dramatized many classics for Focus on the Family Radio Theatre, including A Christmas Carol and Jan Karon's At Home in Mitford. He also wrote and directed the Peabody Award–winning Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Freedom and created the highly acclaimed Father Gilbert Mysteries series. Paul lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two children.


Death In the Shadows is available from Lion Publishing, part of Kregel Publishing.

Thanks to Kregel for  the review copy.

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