Father Blackie Ryan mysteries

Both of Nora MacDonaugh's husbands have died under mysterious circumstances, and Bishop Blackie Ryan is the only man who can resist the widow's charms long enough to solve the mystery.

There have been ghostly happenings in the suburban parish of Saints Peter and Paul. It seems that the spririt of recently deceased Monsignor Charles McInerny is restless. Rectory televisions turn themselves on, footsteps are heard and a presence is felt in the bedroom where the body was found. But when Bishop Blackie Ryan comes to investigate, he discovers other strange occurrences that are far more earthly -- and condemning -- such as an adulterous...

Bishop Blackie Ryan investigates rape and murder on an aircraft carrier, crewed by 5,000 men and 1,000 women "teeming with hormones." In the guise of a detective story, a penetrating analysis of the Navy's policy of mixing sexes and how it could work out.

Upon arriving in Chicago, the new Auxiliary Bishop manages to disappear while riding the L train and strangely enough, the whole train disappears with him. Naturally, it is up to Blackie to find him.

"See to it, Blackwood," says the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, and Blackie Ryan, the Cardinal's auxiliary bishop, doesn't exactly jump (he never jumps), rather he moseys down to Washington, D.C., where one of his friends, Jack Patrick McGurn, called "Machine Gun McGurn" by the media, has surprisingly just been elected president and needs his help. Blackie's first confrontation is with Washington bureaucracy; the powers that be don't want to give...

"Bishop Blackie Ryan is summoned to St. Lucy's Church in Chicago. The old neighborhood is changing, and some people don't like it at all. Now three bodies have been left in the sanctuary. Is it a warning to those who would "gentrify" the neighborhood, or to St. Lucy's monsignor who has made his share of enemies? Blackie fears that this could be just the beginnning, and enlists the help of his long-dead father, as well as Declan O'Donnell, a savvy...

Taking leave of his usual Chicago haunts, Archbishop John Blackwood Ryan travels to the south of Spain in this latest mystery by bestselling author Greeley. The local cardinal has summoned the wily archbishop to Spain in hopes that Blackie can avert a murder before it happens.