Ritual Death

A Jesuit priest visitiing a Northwest Indian Reservation? The opportunites for an interesting and compelling background to this novel are clear: a cultural diversity, a mysterious Indian clan and its death and adulhood rituals, the economic tenuousness of a commercial fishing reservation, and the prejudices and distances of the inhabitants of smalltown America. No matter how exotic the background, the plot of the novel contains some comfortingly familiar techniques: murder, greed and economic pillage, drugs, smuggling, hidden treasure, a precocious child, mistaken identity, and successful unravelling of the mystery through common sense and deductive reasoning. It all combines in an interesting way to spend your mystery-reading time: A Ritual Death is well written and set in a fascinating place and culture. With all of that going for it, this novel does just fine, even without any new plot angles.