reviewed by Randy England

From the back cover:

Who is killing the Catholic bishops of Los Angeles? One by one, they’re dying–horribly. The clues surrounding the murders point to an occult connection and the police are stumped.

Move over Fathers Brown and Dowling and make room for cop-turned priest Father John Baptist. Like all good fictional sleuths, Father Baptist asks the questions that nobody else asks. He absorbs the evidence–keeping his thoughts to himself—until the climax of the story. If that was Father Baptist’s whole shtick, there would be little else to tell. But it’s not.

The Endless Knot is a wild story with an outrageous company of characters in orbit around this traditionalist priest-detective. Holmes had Watson. Father Baptist must make do with a brash, often annoying sidekick: his half-crippled gardener, Martin, a fellow with few unspoken thoughts. Since Martin is also the story’s narrator, the reader–like it or not–is privy to any of his remaining thoughts.

For undercover work, Father Baptist relies on four young men calling themselves the Knights Tumblar, a small Catholic “gentlemen’s club” which meets regularly with Father Baptist. When not discussing history and literature, the Tumblars are known to enjoy drink and song as they evangelize Los Angeles’ bars and nightclubs, always clad in formal evening attire. Strange guys.

These days many readers have been jaded by crime lab shows like CSI, but even so, the murders in this story are pretty horrible. The nastiness of the crimes is perhaps mitigated by the fact that the victims comprise most of the leadership of a liberal new-agey (fictional) Catholic diocese: a diocese so bad that it could only be improved by the victims’ sudden departure.

The killer leaves multiple clues pointing to his (or her) identity as well as motives for the murders. Father Baptist quickly realizes that the evidence is not only telling him there are more murders to come, but the whos, whens and hows of those future crimes, if only he can puzzle it out.

I have to say I enjoyed this novel once I became accustomed to its jarring characters and style. The Endless Knot is very Catholic. Its protagonists are orthodox, but very traditional latin mass people. (In my town, if you want a mass in a foreign language, it’s Spanish or nothing). I liked them so much that it pleased me to find that Mr. Biersach has continued the series. I look forward to the further adventures of Father John Baptist.