Clerical errors

"Communities require victims," said Theodora, "and sometimes the priest, being visible and often innocent, fulfills this function." Julia was baffled. "Why?" "To render that community holy, to act as a scapegoat, a focus for the hatreds it cannot otherwise deal with. We all need something we can legitimately hate." England's Medewich Cathedral employs many an industrious clergyman, including, it seems, someone who participates in mass and murder. It falls to cool and clever Deaconess Theodora Braithwaite to hunt down the loose Canon in the Archdiocese. The cathedral itself is run by the iron hand of Canon Wheeler. When the Canon is upset, everyone expects heads to roll -- but not literally. Thus, when young Julia Smith arrives at the diocese to interview for a secretarial position, she is prepared for the unexpected, but quite unprepared for the severed head she discovers in the chapel. The victim: a controversial pastor from a neighboring parish. Not an auspicious beginning to one's first job, but Julia -- like Theodora -- is intrigued by the odd menagerie that is the Canon's staff, and by the passionate undercurrents that run beneath his tyranny. Something is rotten in the Church of England, and Julia and Theodora would do well to beware the machinations of men of the cloth.