The Ordained

by Terence Faherty

In The Lost Keats, Owen Keane was a young seminarian in rural Indiana whose encounter with murder, and his search for an unknown Keats sonnet, changed the path of his life forever. Now, twenty years later, Owen returns to Indiana for the parole hearing of the man he helped send to prison. Still haunted and restless, still in search of answers to the doubts that ended his dream of the priesthood, Keane is drawn into a mystery with a whimsical religious element.

The residents of the isolated town of Rapture, founded by an Adventist sect, the Ordained of God, are disappearing one by one. The Ordained believed that the world would end in 1844 and that they would be taken bodily into heaven. Now, one hundred and fifty years after their rapture failed to occur, something very similar is happening to their descendants.

Encouraged by a young doctor who has shut herself away in Rapture, and disarmed by the legend of the Ordained, Keane investigates and steps directly into the grasp of an implacable, murderous evil.

Kindle Edition

Published March 22, 2020

About the author

Terence Faherty (1954-) is an American author of mystery novels.

My name is Terence Faherty. I'm a storyteller whose stories most often take the form of mysteries. (A critic once noted, cryptically but correctly, that all my stories are mysteries, even the ones that aren't.) I do see basic storytelling and mystery solving as linked, because in so many stories the protagonist is trying to answer a question or right a wrong. This is why I see the mystery and especially the private eye story as a particularly straightforward form of storytelling: a problem is posed and a hero sets out to resolve it. (At least, it would be straightforward if all clients were forthcoming and truthful.)

I've written two series in book form. The Owen Keane series follows the bumpy life of a failed seminarian turned amateur sleuth (a job title I love). It's been nominated twice for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award and once for the Anthony Award and it's won a Macavity Award from Mystery Readers International. The Scott Elliott series is set in old Hollywood during its decline and fall. Elliott, an operative for a shady security company, tries to slow that decline and fall in his own small way. Elliott has been nominated for three Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America and taken home two.


* Uncanny: Short story writen by Terence Faherty.

Series:
* Owen Keane Mystery
* Scott Elliott Mystery