Sisters Mary Helen and Eileen are delivering homemade Irish soda bread just before St. Patrick’s Day as a thank you to various community members. Their last stop is St. Agatha’s church, where the Monsignor in residence, Father Joseph P. Higgins, falls upon their arrival with hearty gratitude and insists they join him for tea. The Sisters are ushered into a room full of angry people and they quickly realize they have interrupted a heated committee meeting.

An awkward hour later, they escape and ponder between them the possible cause of the discord. That very night, the Monsignor dies in his room and it is determined he was poisoned. Surely not by the Irish soda bread the Sisters delivered! Quickly cleared of any wrongdoing, the Sisters remain keenly interested in who could have been angry enough to poison an official of the Church.

Local police inspectors Kate Murphy and Dennis Gallagher are assigned to the case, and the pressure is on them, both from the Church and from the City, to find the murderer quickly and quietly. Having past experience with the two nuns’ assistance in solving a crime, Inspector Gallagher wants nothing to do with them. Kate, however, has a soft spot in her heart for them and listens to their observations with an open mind. It is Sister Mary Helen who convinces Kate to recreate the tea scene meeting one final time, and the murderer is revealed.

Death Takes Up A Collection offers very little physical action, instead describing the inner turmoils and thought processes of the main suspects. There is a browbeaten wife, a former nun, an alcoholic journalist, a rigid widowed accountant and a former history teacher, all with secret aches and pains. All of them suffered humiliation at the hands of the Monsignor, as did the Church staff in constant contact with him. The author reveals a little more about the individuals’ lives and problems each time they are interviewed by the police.

One wonders how so poor a priest and person as the Monsignor Higgins could have lasted undetected and undenounced for so long in such a large parish and in such a high profile position, but the mystery doesn’t work without a bad guy. The two Sisters are gently caring of their fellow man and each other, and their relative innocence in the ways of the world doesn’t stop them from using their wits.

Soft reflections on the nature of man and the grace of God notwithstanding, Death Takes Up A Collection is not a “preachy” book, as one might suspect a religious-based mystery to be, but is instead as mild and familiar as Irish soda bread.

--K. W. Becker