Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Amity Public Library | MYS O'MARIE Sister Mary Helen #3 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Library | FIC OMA | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lyons Public Library | M OMARIE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic (m) O'Marie, C. 1988 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library | O'MARIE Sister Mary Helen #03 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Sister Carol Anne O'Marie was a mystery writer and a nun in the St. Joseph of Carondelet religious order. She wrote eleven novels about a main character named Sister Mary Helen, an elderly nun who solves crimes. Most of the books take place in San Francisco. Sister Carol Anne O'Marie co-ran a shelter for homeless women in Oakland, CA. She was born in 1933 and died in 2009.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A Novena For Murder and Advent of Dying introduced author Sr. O'Marie and her disarming amateur sleuth, Sr. Mary Helen (MH) of a Catholic college in San Francisco. In her 70s but still sharp-eyed and an incurable snoop, MH is devoutly religious and equally devoted to fighting crime. As the nun's third tale gets underway, she's just returned with her confederate, Sr. Eileen, from a meeting in Manhattan of OWL (Older Women's League). Hearing that one of the lay OWL members, widowed Erma Duran, has disappeared, MH prods Eileen into helping her investigate. They question Al Finn, who owns the apartment building where Erma has lived for years, but learn little. Nor do the sisters gain much from consulting Erma's grown children. By now, all the OWLs are worried about the absent woman, and MH descends again on her friends the police, who groan at her interference but agree to play a role in the search. Meantime, MH searches Erma's rooms and keeps tabs on her delinquent adult offspring. So the unwise old OWL is aloneexcept for a merciless adversarywhen she learns Erma's fate. The author's heady mix of humor and suspense again proves irresistible. Mystery Guild alternate. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A third limp adventure for Sister Mary Helen, who lives and works at San Francisco's Mount St. Francis College (Advent of Dying). A visit to New York for a convention of the Older Women's League has revived Mary Helen's old friendship with widow Erma Duran, a fellow San Franciscan. Expecting to hear from her after their return home, Mary Helen, her sidekick Sister Eileen, and other members of the League are much disquieted by Erma's seeming disappearance. Several days and numerous unanswered phone calls later, they're allowed into her apartment by Al Finn, her landlord, who also employs her in the ground-floor restaurant he owns. They find the apartment empty, her suitcase and clothes in place, and Finn insisting that Erma had gone to St. Louis to escape her grown, troublesome children. Mary Helen is unconvinced--and after fruitless attempts to involve her policewoman friend Kate Bassetti (Kate has other things on her mind), she takes matters into her own hands as usual and finds herself confronting a short-fused killer. No surprises here--no real animation or suspense, either. Lots of genteel chitchat and much to-and-froing through the streets of San Francisco--this story's only strength. Harmless but ho-hum. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The author, a nun herself, offers her third mystery, which finds Sisters Mary Helen and Eileen distraught over the disappearance of their friend Erma, a fellow member of the OWL (Older Women's League). Erma is a feisty participant in the activist group for aging women, and it seems wholly out of character for her to vanish with no word to her grown children or her friends. The portrayal of the OWLs, aging college alumnae who battle their causes with umbrellas, stern looks, and library research, and the presence of the detective- nuns lend novelty to this entertaining suspense story. Advent of Dying [BKL O 1 86] was the author's previous mystery. DPD.