A Sudden Death at the Norfolk Cafe

Sister Cecile Mystery #1

by Winona Sullivan

In Dorchester, Massachusetts, the nuns at the Convent of Our Lady of Good Counsel offer sanctuary to the terrified pregnant daughter of a Boston politician. In Cambridge, a small-time crook is murdered. Low priority trouble for a big city, but the hidden connection between the two events is deadly: blackmail, drugs, and big bucks for those who can stay alive long enough to collect.

At the center of things is Sister Cecile, a private investigator heiress, and Catholic nun, who does God's work in strange and wonderful ways. She heads a east that includes lawyer Paul Dorys, who loves her; Martin Moon, a blueblood who loves nobody; Sister Raphael, who loves everybody; and Lyuba McVey; whose heart belongs equally to booze and her murdered son.

It's a crew that requires Sister Cecile to call upon heaven for more help than usual. Heaven, alas, is in no hurry to give it....

Genres: Mystery

218 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Winona Sullivan was a former CIA analyst who brought her experience and her characteristic wit to her writing, publishing a series of novels as well as numerous short stories. In 1991, she received the national award for the Best First Private Eye Novel, by St. Martin's Press and Macmillan London Ltd. An award winning poet and mother of seven children, she taught high school students and was a professor of writing at several colleges. She took great pride in her students, and brought compassion and energy to her teaching. The Winona Sullivan Scholarship Fund was established in her memory in 2004 by her family.

Reviews

[Jo Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1993, this sweet little murder tale reads like 1940s noir.
The main character is the lovely Cecile: an heiress, a private investigator and...a nun.
When a scared teen, pregnant with a mobster's baby appears at the Convent of Our Lady of Good Counsel asking for sanctuary, it is granted. Jane is the spoiled teen daughter of Abe, indifferent to his only child and busy running for office. But Jane isn't afraid of her father; it's her mobster boyfriend she's running from, since she stole his blackmail file when he refused to marry her.
Sister Cecile's best friend is lawyer Paul Dorys, who has loved her since they were children and wishes she'd quit the Church and marry him.
Through Paul, Cecile becomes involved in a murder case--low rent criminal Ray goes after a garbage truck driver/drug dealer when he runs over Ray's mother's flower bed with his truck. Paul has been getting Ray out of jams for years, out of friendship with Ray's mother, who was friends with Paul's mother.
It's a fun romp, a quick read and you'll no doubt want to track down the other books in the series.

[Beatrice Drury · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first and the first Sister Cecile mystery. Sister Cecile is not your ordinary nun. She is an heiress and a private investigator.

I at first thought that this would be a traditional "cozy" mystery. There are some very unsavory characters here plus a frightened young pregnant girl.

There are also some great friends and helpers to Sister Cecile mainly Sister Raphael and lawyer Paul Dorys. Paul is particularly interesting since Paul and Cecile were supposed to be married and still love each other but Cecile's vocation won out over marriage.

Certainly with a nun as the central character, good should win out. It does win, but not without some interesting developments.

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally, I'm a sucker for books with nuns (or monks, for that matter). I'm not sure how I felt about this one. It was an enjoyable story and I'll be looking out for the others in the series. It wasn't a good mystery because the reader knew everything that was going on. It was fun to watch the characters involved solve their pieces of the puzzle and bring it all together though.

It was the religious aspect that I had a problem with, but I suspect that that was mainly because this is a contemporary book with nuns. No cellphones or email, so it's presumably set in the early nineties when it was written. Possibly the way the nuns interact with the outside world is fairly accurate. I do wonder just how much research the author did. For a start, the order doesn't seem to be mentioned, possibly this is a fictional order to suit the purposes of the author. It's hard to tell given the myriad orders that actually exist.

This is a fun story and, while I probably wouldn't recommend it to most people that I know, if you like more old-fashioned detective stories, with less of the violence and sex that is so common these days, then you'll probably enjoy this.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sister Cecile sounds like my kind of nun :) She had a PI job on the side. She drinks. She's filthy rich in an odd kind of way. I like her.

But I didn't like anyone (except Paul) who wasn't a nun. The drug dealers were too gangsterish, the pregnant girl was too goody, and all the other males turned me off.

Maybe I'd try another nun mystery. Hopefully the other players wouldn't annoy me so much.

[Miriam Shadis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this slightly silly novel about a crime-fighting heiress nun. In part, I liked it so much because it was all familiar territory in Boston and Cambridge (with a little Paris thrown in.) Not great literature, but very entertaining!

[Betsy]

For an older book, this was still fresh and gripping. A good mystery.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable quick read. Not much of a mystery