Harry Dee: or Working It Out

Tom Playfair #3

by Francis J. Finn

Harry Dee is the third and final book in Fr. Francis Finn's series about Tom Playfair and his friends from St. Maure's boarding school. Harry Dee arrives at St. Maure's traumatized by the murder of his uncle, and by the fact that all the clues point to his beloved nurse as the killer. At St. Maure's, he meets Tom Playfair and his group of friends, who work on making him well physically, mentally, and spiritually. As he goes through a number of schoolboy adventures, such as baseball games, boating trips gone awry, and scholarly competitions, he attempts to solve the mystery of his missing nurse, who disappeared on the night of the murder, and tries to fully recover from his horrible experience. With the help of Tom, Percy, Harry Quip, and the rest of the St. Maure's gang, Harry is able to become a normal boy, until a night spent in his dead uncle's house, which is popularly thought to be haunted, resolves the mystery and gives him his vocation. In the background, all of the boys of St. Maure's are growing up and trying to find their personal callings in life. All around a great read, and a perfect wrap-up to the Tom Playfair series.

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1892

About the author

Father Francis J. Finn, S.J. was born to Irish immigrant parents at St. Louis, Missouri in 1859.

As a boy, Francis was deeply impressed with Cardinal Wiseman’s famous novel of the early Christian martyrs, Fabiola. After that, religion really began to mean something to him. Eleven-year-old Francis was a voracious reader; he read the works of Charles Dickens, devouring Nicholas Nickleby and The Pickwick Papers. From his First Communion at age 12, Francis began to desire to become a Jesuit priest; but then his fervor cooled, his grades dropped, and his vocation might have been lost except for Fr. Charles Coppens. Fr. Coppens urged Francis to apply himself to his Latin, to improve it by using an all-Latin prayerbook, and to read good Catholic books. Fr. Finn credited the saving of his vocation to this advice and to his membership in the Sodality of Our Lady.

After graduating from St. Louis University, he became a Jesuit and was ordained a priest in 1893. He had already begun writing his debut novel Tom Playfair prior to this, as he was assigned to St. Mary s College in Kansas and dealt with unruly boys on a daily basis. He went on to write twenty-seven other books, and his novels for children were very successful. The books contain fun stories, likeable characters and themes that remain current in today's world. Each story conveys an important moral precept. He was much loved by young people, and thousands of them gathered to honor his death in 1928.

Reviews

[Surfy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[PottWab Regional Library]

SM

[Nana]

Set of six fun boy books