Hasty Retreat

Making her hardcover debut in her fourth appearance (after Unholy Angels, 1996) is the hard-to-repress, often acerbic Mother Lavinia Grey, Episcopalian pastor of St. Bede's in Fishersville, N.J. The demands of her job having taken their toll on her good will, Lavinia sets off for a weekend retreat at a monastery in upstate New York. Her hopes for peace and quiet are dashed by the arrival of her ecclesiastical enemy: Father Bingley, who had threatened her congregation with eviction, is leading some members of his community on a Lenten retreat. When an elderly monk is found stabbed to death with a knitting needle, Lavinia briefly wonders if there's a way to pin the murder on Bingley. Then she and her sidekick, Deacon DeeDee Gilchrist, are asked to investigate. In the process of questioning everyone, they unearth the secrets of the retreat house as well as their fellow retreatants, endangering their lives in the process. They ransack all the rooms while everyone else is at church service and go through Bingley's pants pockets while he showers. Although readers who have been enticed by the story's religious setting may be put off by Lavinia's not-so-charitable ways, the denouement finds her heading homeward with firm intentions to be kinder. (July)