Prior Knowledge

Prior Knowledge is a period mystery with religion, sex, and murder all in one volume. Master story teller James Baker here follows the wild excursion of the aging Benedictine monk Father Columba as he is called out of retirement to reform a troubled priory and ends up becoming a sleuth. Upon arriving at his new post, a priory commissioned to train belated vocations for the priesthood, he learns that his predecessor has mysteriously disappeared; and before he can solve that puzzle he finds himself in the middle of a bloody murder. Someone has killed a seminarian! Getting to the bottom of this crime will require all his theological training, some trial and error good luck, and of course prior knowledge. As he probes the varied and sundry secrets of his monks and seminarians, he discovers for the first time the many facets of love and hate. At age 65 he himself finds the kind of love he long ago promised never to experience: sex with a young Chinese American newspaper woman. Join Father Columba in his quest for truth–religious, legal, sexual–which just could all be cut from the same holy cloth.