THE EMPTY CONFESSIONAL

In Hogan’s latest novel, a conflicted priest takes God’s justice into his own hands.

Pittsburgh, 2000. Gabe Russell isn’t your average Catholic priest. At 26, he’s one of the youngest priests in the country to have a parish of his own. The teens love his sermons. He practices Krav Maga. In his spare time, he’s working on a novel with the help of Michelle Carlisle, the writing instructor he met while still in the seminary. Michelle is married, but a strong attachment has formed between the two of them—and it seems to be about more than just Gabe’s engaging fiction. Michelle isn’t the only one making Gabe question his role as pastor, however. Behind the scenes, his archdiocese is covering up for pedophilic priests, and Gabe’s flock is starting to demand answers. “Our jobs require our parishioners’ trust in the Church and in us as its representative,” Gabe tells the small group of fellow clergy he meets with regularly for drinks. “And in the case of pedophilia, if they find they can’t trust the Church, then they have to at least be able to trust me.” With that in mind, Gabe launches a quiet investigation, with the help of another priest, of the bad priests of Pittsburgh, a quest that brings him into contact with the dogged police detective Carla Jessup. But is Gabe’s crusade against the sinful priests—which quickly lurches into violence—just a way of atoning for his own sinful nature? Hogan’s muscular prose makes for easy reading, as here where Gabe grows frustrated after several rounds of confession: “An hour later, he heard the door close as his last parishioner exited the confessional. Checking his watch, he saw he had time for a light Krav Maga workout before catching the Pirates game at one of the bars where they knew him, but not as a priest.” Despite some of the action-movie elements—which never feel quite real—the novel sincerely grapples with many of the tensions of modern Catholicism. It’s perhaps an imperfect vessel for these ideas, and its odd blend of genres (and Bible jokes) might not find a wide audience, but the reading experience is an unexpectedly engaging one.

A flawed but memorable novel about a vigilante priest.