Title: Not One Of His Best
Product review: This book de-evolves into a manifesto of what Greeley would like to see in the next Pope. It's almost the author's fantasy scenario about extreme liberalism coming to dominance in the Catholic Church, right down to a Spanish Pope who wears business suits and who used to be a married husband and father. This far-fetched novel has so little material on which to construct a plot that Greeley concocts a love story around his Papal election politics. There is a reconciliation of a married couple on the outs, and a half-hearted aside into a secondary plotline about a man who wants to murder the next Pope. Oh, and Father Greeley drags his favorite Chicago Cardinal into the book to fill more pages and gives the poor old man a life and death personal crisis. This soap opera could have been a good short story but it's a dismal novel. Virgin And Martyr and Angels of September are better books by Andrew Greeley, and a few of the Blackie Ryan mysteries are fun, but White Smoke is a clunker.
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