The Absence of Goodness

When a sheriff's deputy is brutally murdered, fellow deputy Margaret Donovan-his lover-now finds herself questioning every choice she has made as her life spins out of control. Margaret, the daughter of a well-respected Sheriff, struggles to find meaning in life and falls back on the faith she was raised in. A friendship develops between her and a nun from the local convent that reawakens that faith. In time, she hands in her badge and gun and takes the veil. When she is about to make her final profession, two students at Saint Dominic's High School are murdered. Her old boss the Sheriff asks her to work with him to solve the killings. Margaret soon discovers a link between the two recent killings and the murder of another Saint Dominic's student that has gone unsolved for more than thirty years. She also learns that there may have been an effort to cover up that old killing to protect some very influential people. She suspects that someone has returned to even the score. But who? As she works to find a killer before he strikes again, she also struggles with herself as her decision about a final profession to the religious life draws near. There are two big problems. There is another child out there who is on the killer's hit list, but they don't know who he or she is. And the detective Margaret is working with, Bill Templeton, is falling in love with her. Margaret soon realizes that she is beginning to fall in love with him. This fast-paced novel has little in common with other so-called clerical mysteries because the protagonist, Sister Margaret, is a complex woman who makes bad choices more often then she would like. Her desperate attempt to solve the murders of two of her students is as much a spiritual journey as it is a mystery. Only God knows where it will all end, and it is Margaret's faith and ultimately her love that will allow her to make it through.