A Killing in Retrospect

by Barbara Cummings

Overview

From Publishers Weekly
A gangland war threatens to break out in Depression-era Providence, R.I., in Cummings's gripping second Sister Agnes mystery (after 2006's A Killing on Church Grounds). Dante Ricci, the nine-year-old son of reputed mob boss Vincent Ricci, asks Sister Mary Agnes of the Merciful Sisters of Mary to catch whoever killed his mother, who died a year earlier in a suspicious car crash at the Ricci family farm. Aggie's policeman cousin, Sgt. Josiah Morgan, and Pietro Tiny DiSilva, Vincent's partner, join the informal investigation. After Irish maid Kitty Killian dies from eating cyanide-laced sugar cubes intended for Vincent, Sister Agnes begins to think they're starring in their own version of the gangster film Public Enemy. Sure enough, more murders follow. Cozy fans will appreciate Aggie's prayerful approach to crime solving, though some may wonder about her fondness for firearms (I did love the feel of a gun in my hands). (Oct.)
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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781432826413
Publisher:	Gale Group
Publication date:	10/16/2009
Sold by:	CENGAGE LEARNING
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

Editorial Reviews

A gangland war threatens to break out in Depression-era Providence, R.I., in Cummings’s gripping second Sister Agnes mystery (after 2006’s A Killing on Church Grounds). Dante Ricci, the nine-year-old son of reputed mob boss Vincent Ricci, asks Sister Mary Agnes of the Merciful Sisters of Mary to catch whoever killed his mother, who died a year earlier in a suspicious car crash at the Ricci family farm. Aggie’s policeman cousin, Sgt. Josiah Morgan, and Pietro “Tiny” DiSilva, Vincent’s partner, join the informal investigation. After Irish maid Kitty Killian dies from eating cyanide-laced sugar cubes intended for Vincent, Sister Agnes begins to think they’re starring in their own version of the gangster film Public Enemy. Sure enough, more murders follow. Cozy fans will appreciate Aggie’s prayerful approach to crime solving, though some may wonder about her fondness for firearms (“I did love the feel of a gun in my hands”). (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Murder past and present awaits an indecorous nun in Depression-era Rhode Island. In the 12 years she's been a Merciful Sister of Mary, Sister Mary Agnes has failed to blossom into a competent cook, housekeeper or administrator. As recent experience has painfully demonstrated, she can't even sing a five-note "Amen." Evidently she has only two talents: She can outshoot and out-detect her cousin, Sgt. Josiah Morgan of the Providence Police Department. It's this last skill that provokes a request from her favorite fourth-grade student, Dante Ricci, who wants her to find the truth about his mother's death. The official story is that Catherine Ricci was killed when her car hit a tree on the farm owned by her husband, reputed mob boss Vincent Gaetano Ricci. It takes Sister Agnes and her science-savvy sidekick Sister Winifred only a few minutes to deduce that Catherine must have been murdered. Lest the two nuns consider resting on their laurels, there's a scullery maid's poisoning, another murder and then reports of three more in the recent past, the victims all associates of Vincent's ailing father Donato, the nominal head of the family. Armed with Socratic logic-she invokes Plato more often than Jesus-and a liberal supply of anodyne epithets like "Darn my socks!," Sister Agnes links the killings to a vendetta that's been brewing for years. The endearingly disorganized heroine (A Killing on Church Grounds, 2006, etc.) easily upstages the cluttered mystery and the unconvincing killer.

Kirkus Reviews