"The Penitent Priest" by J.S. Mathis & Susan Mathis

Father Tom Greer has been assigned to a temporary position at Saint Clare’s Church. The current priest is on sick leave for four months, and Father Tom has been working as an archivist for his archbishop in Baltimore. The archbishop thinks it would be a good idea to push Father Tom out into the world. 

But Myersburg? Father Tom knows it only too well. This is where he was living 15 years before when his wife Joan was murdered. The killer was never found. His former mother-in-law is still here, as are a number of friends. And he’s managing it okay, until he discovers that he may not have known his wife as well as he thought he had. Like about her previous marriage. And spending time in a mental institution. And taking medication for bipolar disorder. And about the person who’d been stalking her. And the police didn’t know either.

 

And things begin to happen, like in the confessional box. A local filmmaker gets interested in the story, as does a rather unethical journalist from Baltimore who’s convinced Father Tom was the one who killed his wife. And he never told the police everything that happened the night Joan was killed.

 

J.R. Mathis & Susan Mathis

And to make the situation even more complex, an old girlfriend, the girl who once he thought he might marry, is now the lead detective on the police force, transferred there from the Washington, D.C., area under something of a cloud.

 

The Penitent Priest is the first of 12 Father Tom mysteries by the husband-and-wife writing team of J.R. Mathis and Susan Mathis. It’s the story of a Catholic priest with a past, a past he’s avoided confronting until he has no choice. And then he decides he wants to confront, to find out what happened, and to find his wife’s killer. 

 

The Mathis team has two writing series – the Father Tom series and 12 books (so far) in the Mercy and Justice series. They have one of the more unusual author bios (see the web site), and they live in Florida.

 

The Penitent Priest is a fast-paced, well-done story with an unusual hero / detective. It’s a story in which just when you think you have it figured out, you don’t.