What do you think?
Rate this book
Father Dowling #11
The Basket Case
A baby is found in a pew of Roger Dowling's church, and against his better judgement, he honors the mother's request that he hide the baby for a while. But a brutal murder follows a strange chain of events, and Father Dowling has a new mystery to solve.
182 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
3 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Ralph McInerny
175 books82 followersRalph Matthew McInerny was an American Catholic religious scholar and fiction writer, including mysteries and science fiction. Some of his fiction has appeared under the pseudonyms of Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey, Edward Mackin, and Monica Quill. As a mystery writer he is best known as the creator of Father Dowling. He was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Jacques Maritain Center, and Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in June 2009. He died of esophageal cancer on January 29, 2010.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 26, 2025
This book took forever to get through reading aloud with my wife because the dialogue was hard to follow, the story was kind of hard to follow, and after the very fun beginning, the whole thing was, frankly, kind of boring. Father Dowling as the spiritual heir of Father Brown, the priest who solves crimes because he knows how evil can affect people in different ways, is interesting but in this one at least seemed overly cluttered by insignificant characters who didn't add anything and an overly simple mystery which made the cluttering necessary.
Anyway, this still gets three stars because I think the cover of this book is my favorite of all time. I hope to display it prominently in my bookcase wherever I go.
Anyway, this still gets three stars because I think the cover of this book is my favorite of all time. I hope to display it prominently in my bookcase wherever I go.
November 29, 2021
Good enough for its genre, though it doesn't come close to Father Brown. It was written in 1987 and definitely shows its age now, especially through its black and female characters (Judge Jones is relentlessly derided as a feminist who obtained her position through sole pushiness). The plotting and pacing certainly could have used some work as it was sometimes difficult to follow what was actually going on. The character development is fairly strong, though, and June is a wholly sympathetic character.
April 28, 2015
Forgivness, Ruth’s thoughts on Father Dowling’s God
In Ralph McInerny’s 1987 Father Dowling Mystery, The Basket Case, the mystery surrounds one Harold Farley. He’s a middle-aged success, a pillar of his parish. He’s widely respected and admired. He’s the head usher at the ten o’clock mass and he receives a special award from the pope ─ The Knight of Saint Gregory. Funny thing is, Harold never goes to communion. He can’t receive because he’s living a life of sin. Having seduced a young woman around the same age as his daughters, he’s set her up in an apartment and embarked with her on a lengthy affair. But lest you think Mr. Farley is nothing more than a lecherous old satyr, we’re given a sympathetic account of how he treats his kept-girl. He’s as interested in uplifting her as he is in bedding her, a sort of lusty Henry Higgins, and it bothers him, his own sin, and the sin he’s put on the girl, and someday he’s going to make amends, with his church and his god and his family, and maybe with the girl too. In the meantime, though, he’ll sneak off to the apartment he’s arranged for her and what else he’ll do is dictate pretty much every facet of her life, and why not? He knows better than she does what’s best for her.
It’s all going pretty well for Harold until the girl gets pregnant (intentionally.)
He had assumed she was on the pill. How cavalier of you, Harold, and, ahem, artificial contraception is a mortal sin, one more reason to shun the communion rail, or is the pill only a sin for the person who actually swallows it?
Harold’s reaction when she gives him the news:
“What are YOU going to do?” (Caps mine)
This from a man who decides everything about the girl’s life.
From here it gets murky. There won’t be an abortion, although it sounds as if the possibility was at least tossed about, and the baby, conveniently (for everyone except the baby) dies before it can be baptized, which consigns it to Limbo but spares Harold having to confess to his wife and daughters, and to Father Dowling too. Later, toward the end of the book, we’re told how Harold had decided the child should not be allowed to live. Huh? What’s that mean? Did they wait until the baby was born, then kill it? Did the baby die from intentional neglect?
Had Harold been a real man, a real pillar of his faith, he’d have allowed for the birth of the child and used it as the opportunity to come clean with his wife and daughters and with his church and his god. That’s redemption. He could have begun receiving communion again. Harold has always intended to provide financially for his mistress and he’s wealthy enough and cunning enough to do it without anyone finding out, but he doesn’t do it. Oh, he’s well intentioned, he just doesn’t get around to it and dies suddenly, In flagrante delicto, as they say.
Flash forward twenty-five years, to 2009, the year before the author died, and at the conclusion of his fifty-something years association with the University of Notre Dame. The university has invited President Obama to give its commencement address and McInerny is uncompromising in his condemnation of his university for having invited the baby-killer-in-chief Obama to give the commencement address.
So much for sympathy and understanding and for the realization life can be complicated and messy.
Or maybe it was simply the passage of time. We were all probably more tolerant in 1987 than we are today, although the pendulum had started to swing, but it’s disappointing, the erudite conservative abandoning his grasp of the complexities of life.
It happens.
But the book really isn’t about Harold or his sins. It’s a mystery. Who put the baby in the basket and dropped it off at the church? Who killed the daddy of the baby? What dirty secrets lurk in the Farley closets? And who can get to the truth, with all the deference paid to the Farley girls?
Why, Father Dowling, of course.
All the usual characters are here, including those two cops, Agnes and Cy. She’s black, he’s not, she’s hip, he’s square, they banter, you get the picture. There’s the patrician attorney Amos Cadbury and some low-life ambulance-chasers. (Macinerly does ambulance chasers better than he does patricians.) There’s faithful Marie, the housekeeper at the rectory and there’s our man, Father Dowling. The good father is somewhat more involved in this case than in others, (he finds the baby,) and he comes dangerously close to implicating himself in a crime, but mostly he’s in his usual comfortable role, standing by, puffing his pipe, observing, dispensing sage advice.
It’s a short book, 181 pages, and entertaining enough so you can bang it out in an afternoon or an evening, and it’s well enough written so you can get lost in it, which is all we should ask of a mystery, even if it’s from the hands of a renowned religious scholar who sometimes was sympathetic and sometimes wasn’t.
In Ralph McInerny’s 1987 Father Dowling Mystery, The Basket Case, the mystery surrounds one Harold Farley. He’s a middle-aged success, a pillar of his parish. He’s widely respected and admired. He’s the head usher at the ten o’clock mass and he receives a special award from the pope ─ The Knight of Saint Gregory. Funny thing is, Harold never goes to communion. He can’t receive because he’s living a life of sin. Having seduced a young woman around the same age as his daughters, he’s set her up in an apartment and embarked with her on a lengthy affair. But lest you think Mr. Farley is nothing more than a lecherous old satyr, we’re given a sympathetic account of how he treats his kept-girl. He’s as interested in uplifting her as he is in bedding her, a sort of lusty Henry Higgins, and it bothers him, his own sin, and the sin he’s put on the girl, and someday he’s going to make amends, with his church and his god and his family, and maybe with the girl too. In the meantime, though, he’ll sneak off to the apartment he’s arranged for her and what else he’ll do is dictate pretty much every facet of her life, and why not? He knows better than she does what’s best for her.
It’s all going pretty well for Harold until the girl gets pregnant (intentionally.)
He had assumed she was on the pill. How cavalier of you, Harold, and, ahem, artificial contraception is a mortal sin, one more reason to shun the communion rail, or is the pill only a sin for the person who actually swallows it?
Harold’s reaction when she gives him the news:
“What are YOU going to do?” (Caps mine)
This from a man who decides everything about the girl’s life.
From here it gets murky. There won’t be an abortion, although it sounds as if the possibility was at least tossed about, and the baby, conveniently (for everyone except the baby) dies before it can be baptized, which consigns it to Limbo but spares Harold having to confess to his wife and daughters, and to Father Dowling too. Later, toward the end of the book, we’re told how Harold had decided the child should not be allowed to live. Huh? What’s that mean? Did they wait until the baby was born, then kill it? Did the baby die from intentional neglect?
Had Harold been a real man, a real pillar of his faith, he’d have allowed for the birth of the child and used it as the opportunity to come clean with his wife and daughters and with his church and his god. That’s redemption. He could have begun receiving communion again. Harold has always intended to provide financially for his mistress and he’s wealthy enough and cunning enough to do it without anyone finding out, but he doesn’t do it. Oh, he’s well intentioned, he just doesn’t get around to it and dies suddenly, In flagrante delicto, as they say.
Flash forward twenty-five years, to 2009, the year before the author died, and at the conclusion of his fifty-something years association with the University of Notre Dame. The university has invited President Obama to give its commencement address and McInerny is uncompromising in his condemnation of his university for having invited the baby-killer-in-chief Obama to give the commencement address.
So much for sympathy and understanding and for the realization life can be complicated and messy.
Or maybe it was simply the passage of time. We were all probably more tolerant in 1987 than we are today, although the pendulum had started to swing, but it’s disappointing, the erudite conservative abandoning his grasp of the complexities of life.
It happens.
But the book really isn’t about Harold or his sins. It’s a mystery. Who put the baby in the basket and dropped it off at the church? Who killed the daddy of the baby? What dirty secrets lurk in the Farley closets? And who can get to the truth, with all the deference paid to the Farley girls?
Why, Father Dowling, of course.
All the usual characters are here, including those two cops, Agnes and Cy. She’s black, he’s not, she’s hip, he’s square, they banter, you get the picture. There’s the patrician attorney Amos Cadbury and some low-life ambulance-chasers. (Macinerly does ambulance chasers better than he does patricians.) There’s faithful Marie, the housekeeper at the rectory and there’s our man, Father Dowling. The good father is somewhat more involved in this case than in others, (he finds the baby,) and he comes dangerously close to implicating himself in a crime, but mostly he’s in his usual comfortable role, standing by, puffing his pipe, observing, dispensing sage advice.
It’s a short book, 181 pages, and entertaining enough so you can bang it out in an afternoon or an evening, and it’s well enough written so you can get lost in it, which is all we should ask of a mystery, even if it’s from the hands of a renowned religious scholar who sometimes was sympathetic and sometimes wasn’t.
April 8, 2008
Father Dowling on the case again. Not the best in the series.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews