Charisma

Away from the convent, a former nun stumbles onto the path of a killerSusan Murphy is still getting accustomed to blue jeans. For seventeen years, she has worn a nun’s habit, and she was used to the coziness of her cape, the anonymity of her uniform. Eventually, she decides it is time to leave the convent, go back to the world, and return to her family. It doesn’t take long for her to remember how awful the real world can be.A killer stalks New Haven, marking former nuns for death. At the same time, the young gay men on the city’s fringes are being murdered execution-style. Susan hears these stories first-hand from her police detective brother, and she soon befriends a cop who believes there’s a connection between the two series of crimes. Most of the female victims have been old women—frail, afraid, and unable to save themselves—but Susan is a nun who fights back.From Publishers WeeklyReclaiming her special niche in the crime fiction genre, Papazoglou ( Sanctity ) takes well-born 35-year-old Susan Murphy out of the convent after 17 years and depicts her life in her native New Haven, Conn. The week that Susan returns to her family's grand house to live with her brothers Dan, the Elm City's DA, and ne'er-do-well Andy, marks the beginning of two crime waves: the murders and ritual markings of former nuns and the execution-style murders of very young male prostitutes. Expertly building suspense, Papazoglou follows Susan as she begins to spend time at Damien House, Father Tom Burne's refuge for street kids in the city's worst section, and cuts to the unidentified murderer who kills nuns under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. New Haven's chief of homicide, Pat Mallory, must try to solve both sets of crimes as he and Susan are drawn together. While the intricate plot begs belief on some central issues, e.g., the pervasive pederasty in New Haven's upper echelons, and fails to resolve others, including the mysterious circumstances of Susan's parents' deaths, on the whole Papazoglou's latest keeps faith with its readers as it leaps to the revelations of its resolution. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsThe author turns again to the world of Catholicism (Sanctity, 1986) and to the once serene city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Susan Murphy has moved back into the family home after 17 years in a religious order. Her brother Dan, now New Haven's district attorney, and younger brother Andy still live there. Needing some purpose in her new life, Susan tries to be useful at Damien House, a refuge for damaged children run by Father Tom Burne. There, she meets Pat Mallory, police department head of Homicide, presently beset by a double run of killings--several young boys have been found shot to death, gangland style, and a series of women, all ex- nuns, have been ritualistically murdered. Rumors of a well- connected ring of pederasts; a hard look at the city's mean streets; an accusation of child abuse against Father Burne; the political ambitions of Dan Murphy; the deranged thoughts and plans of the serial killer, and much, much more come together in the chilling climax to a lurid story. Occasionally overwrought, sometimes straining credibility, and not for the queasy--but compelling all the way. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.