the Dead Hand of Living: A Mighty Monk Mystery

In The Dead Hand of the Living, Father Ignatius Lacroix, S.J., returns in the fourth Mighty Monk Mystery, drawn reluctantly from his study to Stonehill College for a theology symposium on faith, justice, and the common good. He expects lectures, arguments, tea, and the ordinary tedium of academic life. Instead, within thirty-six hours, Father Edmund Pruitt, the Dean of Theology, is found dead in the rare books room-apparently of cardiac arrest. But Lacroix notices what others overlook: a rinsed cup, a teapot left untouched, conflicting entry records, and the uneasy silence surrounding a forty-million-dollar bequest. The gift that promises to transform the college may also be rooted in hidden suffering, institutional self-protection, and a past that refuses to remain buried. As Stonehill closes ranks, Lacroix must follow the faint trail left by a dead man who wanted to speak before time ran out. What begins as a campus tragedy becomes a moral reckoning over justice, mercy, loyalty, and complicity. The dead hand of the past still reaches into the present-and Lacroix must discover who is willing to kill to keep it there.

Pagina's: 201, Paperback, Independently published