Article 7

Exceptional debut novel!

Wow! This book took me completely by surprise! Over the last decade I have averaged reading about a book a day, and this is one of the best debut novels, if not one of the best novels I have read! I was approached about reading this because I had reviewed books on Meister Eckhart and Columbo back to back. I was intrigued by the cover. We are informed about Brock: “Known as ‘The Deacon’ by the Cleveland Police Department. A convicted felon. A licensed private investigator. A man vowed to religious life as a Brother. Brock H. Winters did thirty-eight months for embezzlement and earned his license after prison. He works missing persons cases because he was once a man nobody looked for.” We are also informed that Article 7, of the Rule of the Dominican Brothers of Saint Joseph states: “Let each brother hold the orphan as a child of his own body, and love him so. It shall cost him nothing, save that he never again set himself above the child.” We are also informed that the rules will be assembled one book at a time, and are beginning with the above rule 7. The series is planned for 13 volumes, and I have to state that after this first volume, you will absolutely be desperate for the next The story is written as Brock narrates his own journals or ledgers. He wants to be clear, factual, and concise. We know he is an ex-con, we soon realize he has been pardoned but does not pardon himself. He lives by ritual and routine. He is a sacristarian, the person who sets up before mass, and cleans up after, specifically at St. Joseph’s. He notices things, things other people do now. He sees the patterns, adjusts the ledgers. He notices what is missing and what has been added. And He almost misses the most important clues. Brock is the type of guy you would want in your corner, and definitely looking for you if you were missing. The story is set in Cleveland. Once He pulls the sting on a missing person he cannot let go. He soon finds echoes from his own past and he needs to determine of the false notes he is noticing are for protection or for harm. He cannot let go, even after he is offered an easy out. I seldom highlight when reading fiction, but this story kept grabbing my attention. I shared quotes with friends and highlighted a lot. Some of those highlights are: “People come to seven o’clock Mass for the same basic reason they come to a private detective. Something has gone missing, and they’ve run out of places to look.” “Like the building healed over him. People hand you the title of the case in the first conversation if you let them talk. They always do. Write that down somewhere if you’re ever in my line of work, either line.” “I’m a professed brother of the Dominican Brothers of Saint Joseph: a lay apostolate of penitents, founded in Spain seven centuries ago to guard women, widows, and orphans, and re-founded every generation by men like me who needed guarding first.” “But I can tell you exactly what it does to a man, being unlooked-for. It’s not the bars. A man can make his peace with bars; they’re honest, at least, about what they are.” “Every life in America throws a paper shadow. You can’t help it. You rent, you borrow, you get sick, you get towed, you subscribe to something and forget to cancel it. And each one of those ordinary sins leaves a mark on a page somewhere, and the marks accumulate, and by the time you’re forty, the shadow is longer than you are. Most people never think about it. A skip-tracer thinks about nothing else. I don’t find people, not really. I find shadows, and then I walk to the end of them, and there the person is, blinking up at me, wondering how.” “He took another bite, unhurried, and looked out over the emptying canyon, and for a moment we just stood there, the spy and the sacristan, two men who had between us that afternoon saved a woman neither of us voted for and a city full of people who would never know either of our names, eating a sandwich and not eating a sandwich in the long gold Cleveland light.” Some fiction you read and it was entertaining, some are informative, some are transforming. This is that third type. It has left me thinking for several days. It prompted me to pray. It inspired and it has challenged. In some ways it feels like Jesse Stone by Robert B. Parker, but if Parker or Stone had kept their faith and made it central. It is a slow burn, but the story burns hot and the embers take a long time smouldering down. While researching for this review I discovered that Gray publishes non-fiction under the full version of his name. A few of those titles grabbed my attention as well. I plan on picking up a few to read. And I will absolutely pick up future books in this series or any other fiction he publishes. This is an excellent read, and a fantastic beginning in what looks to be an amazing series!