AN OCCASION OF SIN

Father Greeley's feisty, foulmouthed suburban pastor Father Laurence McAuliffe (The Cardinal Virtues) is back. He is, unsurprisingly, the devil's advocate, now assigned to prove that Chicago's martyred archbishop couldn't possibly be a saint. A saint? As far as Father Lar knew, the late Cardinal McGlynn never even believed in God. Furthermore, when His Exceptionally Handsome Eminence died, felled by a Nicaraguan bullet, he lay cradled in the arms of the millionairess who loved him all his life and who may have been the mother of his child. To the embarrassment of the Church, however, the possibly martyred Cardinal's pectoral cross has cured a hitherto incurable cancer, so the present archbishop has begged Father Lar to clear it all up. Father Lar, who disliked McGlynn from the day they first tangled on the prep-school basketball court, talks to the Cardinal's old flame, his nasty brother, his unhappy sister, his adoring secretary, a dishy Polish spy, a shadowy Vatican figure, and the Pope—and then pieces together the Cardinal's past. The more the priest learns, the less saintly the archbishop's life turns out to have been. But the man himself seems more and more respectable. And there is the matter of a couple of unreported miracles.... Father Greeley's own special blend of clerical politics, sex, and salvation. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for Summer)