The Grass Widow

A young blonde, Clare O’Leary, comes to see Father Dowling and cheerfully tells him she’s hiding out in Fox River, having left her husband, a well-known disc jockey in nearby Waukegan—he has taken up with another woman and periodically jovially announces over the air that he is trying to let out a contract on his wife.
The next day Clare O’Leary is found dead in her motel bed. Strong suspicion of suicide, which Father Dowling cannot believe.
Little by little a cast of entertaining characters emerges: Twinkie Zeugner, the giant piano player at the motel; Wilma Goudge, head of the motel’s Adonis & Aphrodite Physical Fitness Center; Larry O’Leary, the recently bereaved widower of the blonde; and Andrea Koehler, his attractive lawyer. Among other little gems, we re-acquaint ourselves with Mervel, the newspaper reporter; our old friend, Mrs. Murkin; and Captain Phil Keegan and his sterling aides: Lieutenant Horvath and Officer Lamb.
When a clear-cut murder—a gangland shoot-out—occurs, it is somehow related to the apparent suicide of Clare O’Leary. The plot and action thicken until, in an exciting denouement, Father Dowling find himself in deathly struggle with Clare’s murderer.
All in all, a fine addition to Ralph McInerny’s Father Dowling Mysteries.