{"id":3786,"date":"2006-12-29T09:32:55","date_gmt":"2006-12-29T09:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective.html"},"modified":"2006-12-29T09:32:55","modified_gmt":"2006-12-29T09:32:55","slug":"the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of the Clerical Detective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren Winner writes about the genre in the WSJ today.<\/a><\/p>\n

I wrote about it several years ago for OSV. I can’t vouch for the hyperlinks on the page, considering how long ago I put up that piece.<\/a> I’m sure most of them are dead. But…who did it?<\/em><\/p>\n

From my piece:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

It\u2019s no mystery why priests and religious are natural choices to be the protagonists of mystery fiction. <\/span><\/p>\n

What is a mystery, after all, but the story of a confrontation between good and evil, an attempt to restore justice to creation, and to shed light into the darkness? This is what ministry is about, as well, so calling the ordained or vowed forces of good to the scene of a crime makes perfect literary sense.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And from Chesterton:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cThe inconsistencies of human nature are indeed terrible and heart-shaking things, to be named with the same note of crisis as the hour of death and the Day of Judgment. They are not all fine shades, but some of them very fearful shadows, made by the primal contrast of darkness and light. Both the crimes and the confessions can be as catastrophic as lightning. Indeed, The Ideal Detective Story might do some good if it brought men back to understand that the world is not all curves, but that there are some things that are as jagged as the lightning-flash or as straight as the sword.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Winner writes about the genre in the WSJ today. I wrote about it several years ago for OSV. I can’t vouch for the hyperlinks on the page, considering how long ago I put up that piece. I’m sure most of them are dead. But…who did it? From my piece: It\u2019s no mystery why priests…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mystery of the Clerical Detective - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mystery of the Clerical Detective - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lauren Winner writes about the genre in the WSJ today. I wrote about it several years ago for OSV. I can’t vouch for the hyperlinks on the page, considering how long ago I put up that piece. I’m sure most of them are dead. But…who did it? From my piece: It\u2019s no mystery why priests…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-29T09:32:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Mystery of the Clerical Detective - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/the-mystery-of-the-clerical-detective.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Mystery of the Clerical Detective - Via Media","og_description":"Lauren Winner writes about the genre in the WSJ today. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}