THICKER THAN WATER

Another tidy case for Father Dowling--starting off when a stranger is found shot to death in a truck parked in front of Dowling's rectory in Fox River, Illinois. Copchum Phil Keegan soon traces the truck to the used-car lot run by a shady father-and-son . . . and to a security company owned by ex-cop Iggie O'Brien and his son Stevie--whose body (shot by the same gun as in the first murder) turns up in an icehouse. And the murder weapon eventually winds up right on Father D.'s desk. . . which leads him to a dangerous confrontation with a top suspect. No real surprises here, but a wealth of zesty minor characters--a septuagenarian who spices up her life with malice, an ex-con church caretaker longing for his prison cell, a stuttering churchpamphlet writer--makes this an especially genial addition to a modest, easy-to-take series.