This past week I was positively underwhelmed by The Bishop in the West Wing, a mystery novel by Andrew Greeley, a Catholic priest. I’d hoped the novelty of a priest writing about a priest solving mysteries could make for an interesting read, but as with other Greeley novels I've tried, I just couldn't get into it. I finished this one because it was short, the book is being discarded, and the plot unfolded in the White House. Essentially the President is an Irish Bill Clinton from Chicago, who is being plagued by a poltergeist and invites his buddy from the old days, now a bishop serving the cardinal of Chicago, to drive it away. Blackie Ryan, the lead, doesn't do a lot of sleuthing; he just spends several days hanging around the White House while the president eats and has mock-abrasive arguments with his precocious teenage daughters, until eventually Ryan decides the poltergeist is being generated by the malicious lady vice-president.
Well, OK then. This week I’ll be reading a history of steam transportation that I bought a couple of years ago pursuing an interest in steamships. It’s a to-be-read extra. I’m also getting back into Richard Fortey’s Earth, a geological history of the planet.
An Irish Bill Clinton from Chicago? Sounds interesting - we may have a non-Irish Jew from Chicago running for President in the not-too-distant future if he has his way.
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