When an adopted young woman's search for her birth parents leads to murder, Father Dowling and attorney Amos Cadbury risk the heartbreak and peace of two families as they seek the killer of Martha Lynch's biological father.

With too many churches and not enough people to fill them, the Archdiocese has to make some cuts, and many of them, including the proposed closing of St. Hilary's are dangeriously close to the bone. Father dowling rushes to drum up support from church officials and parishioners, including the Deveres, who don't want to see the stained glass windows they donated go anywhere other than the church they were meant for, but they can hardly be of help when...

Enlisted by the head of a local family to help her niece relinquish her ambitions for more earthly pursuits, Father Dowling becomes enmeshed in the family's edgy interrelations, which are marked by an unsolved murder.

During a spiritual retreat on the grounds of a declining religious order, Father Dowling finds himself investigating the murder of a man on the property and discovers that the case is complicated by a long-standing real-estate dispute.