SYNOPSIS
Tattooed from her neck to her toesand sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she’s committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency—both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers.
When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the swollen Mississippi River, and with it, Redemption’s next case. It’s significantly more gruesome than their original mission, but Sister Holiday feels called on by God to hunt down the murderer and keep her community safe.
As a torrential rainstorm drowns New Orleans for three harrowing days over Easter weekend, Sister Holiday and Riveaux follow the clues. With the stakes rising alongside the relentless floodwaters, our favorite punk nun-sleuth throws herself into the deep end yet again.
A lacerating and lyrical plunge into obsession, deception, and the questions that hold us captive, Blessed Water is a lights-out mystery that will leave you breathless.
MY REVIEW
I was lucky enough to be on the blog tour for book one Scorched Grace in this series. So it is great to see what Sister Holiday is up to next. If you haven’t read book one you will find Sister Holiday to be a quite colourful character. She has tattoos from her neck down her whole body, a gold tooth, she likes the odd cigarette, she is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, as well as being a lesbian, and she is not afraid to speak up about the Catholic Church patriarchy. In book 2 she is six months from taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood in New Orleans. It’s fair to say she is damaged, from a dysfunctional family.
Holiday is now looking at becoming a PI serving her 100 hours apprenticeship with former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s Redemption Agency.
Holidays first case is to meet a woman who wants her husband watched believing him to be cheating. But when Holiday goes to the meeting place near the Mississippi River there is no sign of the client. When Riveaux arrives still nothing but by then Holiday has jumped in the river to drag out a body she has spotted. Surprisingly she recognizes the murder victim, he is well known to her from the church, Father Reece. Holiday has never really liked him, but who would want him dead? Then someone else has been abducted, and whoever is doing it is sending Holiday the photo’s, why? Holiday’s brother, Moose, an army medic turns up unexpectedly, could he be involved in what is going on?
The story is told over three days of Easter, the pace is not what I would call fast, but Holidays thoughts are all over the place as she tries to work things out. With memories of the past, of her old lover Nina, her messy upbringing. There are many twists and turns, with New Orleans drowning in torrential rain which is not helping the investigation. Holiday is like no other character you have ever met but she will keep you entertained until the final reveal as to who the guilty party is.
This is a fairly quick read with under 300 pages, there are some great characters in this book that you will like. Holiday certainly has a lot of ups and downs in this one. I just wonder where she will go next.
I would like to thank @PushkinPress for my gifted copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own and have not been influenced in any way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margot Douaihy is a Lebanese American originally from Scranton, PA, now living in Northampton, MA. She received her PhD in creative writing from the University of Lancaster in the UK. She is the author of the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You. She is a founding member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization and an active member of Sisters in Crime and the Radius of Arab American Writers. A recipient of the Mass Cultural Council’s Artist Fellowship, she was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Writing Award, and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation’s Hemingway Shorts. Her writing has been featured in Queer Life, Queer Love; Colorado Review; Diode Editions; The Florida Review; North American Review; PBS NewsHour; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Portland Review; Wisconsin Review; and elsewhere. Margot is an Assistant Professor in Popular Fiction Writing & Literature with Emerson College in Boston. As a coeditor of the Elements in Crime Narrative Series with Cambridge University Press, she strives to reshape crime writing scholarship, with a focus on the contemporary, the future, inclusivity, and decoloniality.
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