Bleeder: Can't Wait to Read this One!

Thanks to Regina Doman and author John Desjarlais for sharing the following press release about John's latest book, Bleeder. I'm looking forward to reading this novel and sharing it with you, but wanted to share this overview so you can get busy reading now!

Catholic mystery BLEEDER explores higher mysteries

Novelist John Desjarlais has "the usual suspects" in his contemporary small-town mystery Bleeder: an amateur sleuth, a cunning villain, baffled police and colorful locals.

But in considering the mysterious death of a stigmatic priest – a priest bearing the wounds of the crucified Christ – Desjarlais explores ‘higher mysteries.’

"Mysteries, close as they are to the barest human motives and fears, and because they deal so openly with death, have a built-in opportunity to explore life's higher mysteries," Desjarlais says, "especially the mystery of undeserved suffering."

In Bleeder, classics professor Reed Stubblefield, wounded in a school shooting, retreats to a cabin in rural Illinois to recover and to write a book on Aristotle in peace. But the town of River Falls is filled with the ill and infirm -- all seeking the healing touch of the town’s new parish priest, reputed to be a stigmatic.

Skeptical about religion since his wife’s death from leukemia, Reed is nevertheless drawn into a friendship with the cleric, Rev. Ray Boudreau, an amiable Aquinas scholar who collapses and bleeds to death on Good Friday in front of horrified parishioners. A miracle? Or bloody murder?

Once Reed becomes the prime ‘person of interest’ in the mysterious death, he seeks the truth with the help of an attractive local reporter and Aristotle’s logic. But not everyone in River Falls wants this mystery solved.

A former producer with Wisconsin Public Radio, Desjarlais teaches journalism and English at Kishwaukee College in Malta, Ill. His work has appeared in a variety of magazines.

A member of The Catholic Writers Guild and Mystery Writers of America, he is listed in Who’s Who in Entertainment and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

Desjarlais’ medieval thriller, Relics, was re-released by Thomas Nelson Publishers in May this year. His earlier historical, The Throne of Tara (Crossway Books), was a Christianity Today Readers Choice award nominee.

Bleeder: A Mystery (Sophia Institute Press, ISBN: 978-1-933184-56-2, Paperback, 272 pages, $14.95), issued August 15, 2009, is available at www.sophiainstitute.com and Amazon.com as well as bookstores everywhere.

For more information, reviews, photos and links related to the book’s content, as well as interaction with the author, visit www.johndesjarlais.com.