Enjoy These Contemporary Small Town Mysteries Featuring A Unique Sleuthing Couple.

This is a collection of books 13-15 in The Mercy and Justice Mysteries. This series is a sequel to The Father Tom Mysteries that began with The Penitent Priest and includes the same cast of characters.

The Detective's Dilemma: The Myerton High School Mules football team are coming off their first winning season in years and looking forward to an even better one. The team is in great shape, and under their second year coach they're really coming together as a team.

But all is not well with some of the players. Several of them were involved in incidents where the police were called. A couple of players were arrested for petty theft. Overall, members of the team are bigger and more aggressive than anyone remembers them being.

All of this has Helen concerned. But what concerns her more is the peculiar behavior of her chief detective, Dan Conway. He seems distracted, and has gone out of his way to downplay the incidents involving members of the football team.

During all of this, Doctor Martin Maycord finds evidence of a potentially dangerous new drug being used by Myerton's young people. Helen asks Dan to look into it.

Then Martin is hit by a car in front of the hospital. What happens next not only threatens the future of the football team, but Helen's relationship with Dan.

The Cardinal's Clock: It's an eventful October for Father Tom and Helen. It begins with the wedding of Father Tom's mother Nola to her fiance, former strip club owner Stu Landry. The two septuagenarian newlyweds have no sooner embarked on their honeymoon than Saint Clare's Parish plays host to the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore Walter Knowland, making his periodic visit.

It should be a welcome homecoming for the Cardinal, who spent his high school years in Myerton. But there's a cloud hovering over the visit. A special state grand jury issued a report, documenting decades of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese. While the report makes clear that the Archdiocese under Cardinal Knowland has mended its ways, he's bearing the brunt of the criticism. He's also received death threats. With this in mind, Helen assigns her newest officer Gwen Tolson–who also happens to be the Cardinal's granddaughter–to his security detail.

During a tour of the Unclaimed Blessings Thrift Store, a large urn falls from a loft, narrowly missing the Cardinal and injuring Gwen. That combined with the firebombing of the Archbishop's Residence in Baltimore convinces Helen that he's in danger. She begins to hunt for the person responsible.

But then an elderly volunteer at the thrift store, Eliza Ross, is murdered. At first it looks like a robbery gone wrong. But it's soon clear to Helen that someone staged the scene to make it look like a robbery. This raises two questions: who'd want to kill her, and why?

In addition, someone breaks into the Rectory and steals an antique clock the Cardinal got at the store. When the clock is found tossed in a dumpster, Tom and Helen are faced with another mystery: who would steal the clock just to throw it away? And what was hidden in the secret compartment someone cut into the base?

In the midst of all this, Gladys goes into labor early . . . and one of the triplets may not make it . . .

The Arrested Angel: A multivehicle crash on the interstate near Myerton leaves several people dead, including the man who caused the accident and a friend of Dominic Trent. The authorities quickly determine that the now-dead driver was both a minor and drunk at the time. Dan and Helen...