BAD FAITH

Placing Special Agent Ella Clah of the Navajo Tribal Police on hold after seven outings (Changing Woman, p. 147, etc.), the Thurlos get themselves to a nunnery. And if things were tough on the rez, it’s no picnic in the cloister either. The Sisters of the Blessed Adoration, an order in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley, are up against it. Their young chaplain—popular who-would-ever-want-to-harm-him Father Anselm—was about to consecrate the bread and wine for morning Mass when he suddenly staggered back, grabbed at his chest, and collapsed of massus interruptus. Even worse, he’s not the victim of a heart attack, but . . . poison? murder? an inside job? The evidence seems to say so. Enter aptly named Sister Agatha. A topnotch investigative reporter before receiving her vocation, she’s ordered by Reverend Mother, who fears the very survival of her home, to don her snooper’s cap once more and crack the case. Sister Agatha, an extern (uncloistered) nun, goes about her task industriously. Looming large in her path, however, is a particularly obdurate obstacle: sullen, resentful Sheriff Tom Green, who knew her when she was free-spirited Mary Naughton, that unabashed swinger. Pre-habit, they cohabited, and he has never quite gotten over being among those she forsook. But formerly sexy Sister Agatha, born to sleuth and rooted in tradition, will duel him to a ratiocinative standstill and catch her killer cozily.

Negligible mystery, characters out of paperback romance, and a plodding prose style unimproved by the change in venue.