A CORNER OF PARADISE
By
Sympathetic Father Bredder has more than the murder of a jewel thief to deal with in his Los Angeles parish--add a nun who's ready to junk her vows, the sudden marriage of Lieutenant Minardi's daughter to a black ex-con, the shooting of America's foremost playwright/art-collector, and mysterious classified ads in the L.A. Times about ""paradise."" All the puzzles converge, of course, and the solution hinges on a dash of cryptography (always a plus) and the ""Rugs and Carpets"" entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The murderer makes some mighty unlikely moves, Father Bredder overdoes his ""spiritual fingerprints"" jive, and cop ""Rosie"" Rosenmann overdoes his Jewishness--but the mix of erudite talk and unforced sentiment will hustle you in and out in an engaging hurry.