cover image Murder Makes a Pilgrimage

Murder Makes a Pilgrimage

Carol Anne O'Marie. Delacorte Press, $19.95 (276pp) ISBN 978-0-385-31050-5

``It's those goddamn old nuns again,'' growls Inspector Dan Gallagher of the San Francisco police when a counterpart in Spain calls for information. In truth, Sister Mary Helen and Sister Eileen of Mount St. Francis College are a somewhat tiresome pair in their fifth case (including A Novena for Murder ), even when they are touring as two of 10 lucky winners of a free pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Actually not all the winners are lucky--one has beeen murdered and another is surely a killer. The nuns use Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a hook on which to hang their discussion of fellow pilgrims, but the characters are instantly forgettable. Not even colorful descriptions of the Spanish sights and three attacks on Mary Helen can quite redeem this flimsily plotted tale. (Nov.)