Requiem at the Refuge

The body of a young prostitute is found slumped against the back door of the nuns' refuge for homeless women in downtown San Francisco. It looks like her skull has been fractured with a coffee mug just like the ones used in the refuge. The sleuthing Sister Mary Helen learns that the day before she died the victim had confided to another lady of the night that she feared for her life. It seems that the dead woman knew a secret that, if revealed, could shake San Francisco right down to the pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge. Marguerite Gavin provides believable African-American street talk, as well as the soft speech of the convent. Her gruff cops and homicide detectives swagger convincingly through their precincts, reluctant to listen to a nun, despite her past successes in solving crimes. In the end, Gavin startles the listener with the chilling voice she provides for the psychotic and surprising killer. E.V. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

February 28, 2000
Eightyish Sister Mary Helen is almost resigned to retirement and is learning to knit when a young friend, Sister Anne, suggests she volunteer at the Refuge, a shelter for homeless women in San Francisco. But during her first hours there, Sister Mary Helen finds the battered corpse of a young prostitute. As in previous books in this series (Death Takes Up a Collection, Death of an Angel), O'Marie's feisty heroine proves the match for any professional detective. The author, a San Francisco nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, evokes convent life in the '90s with simple reverence and gentle humor. Who else would use such a homely aphorism as "If beggars were horses, this entire hill would be full of manure" on the same page with a passage ("O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new") from the Confessions of St. Augustine? The clients of the Refuge, mostly past-their-prime prostitutes, are portrayed with compassion, yet with no attempt to sanitize the sordid realities of their lives. On Nob Hill, meanwhile, Richard Dunn, successful lawyer and erstwhile candidate for governor, is romancing the lovely Amanda, a paralegal in his firm. His plain, plump wife, Betsy, awaits him at home, finally facing the fact that he is a philandering heel. O'Marie twines the strands of these disparate lives with humor and sympathy. Readers won't forget, in particular, the authentic prostitutes Venus, Candy, Genie, Crazy Alice, Peanuts and Miss Bobbie. Mary Helen unravels the mess with her usual insight and sturdy independence, aided, she firmly believes, by her good friend God, who loves them all.