REVIEW: Death Wears a Red Hat

Death Wears a Red Hat
Author: William Kienzle

Death Wears a Red Hat is the second book in the Father Koesler Mystery series. The first Koesler mystery, The Rosary Murders, was the first adult thriller novel I ever read. I thorougly enjoyed it....but being 14 at the time, I moved on to other books and never read the rest of the Koesler books. Given the fact that the librarian called my dad before allowing me to check out the book, it could have been that the library didn't have the rest of the series. Or maybe I was embarrassed to take another Catholic theme murder novel up to the desk to check it out from my former catechism teacher. lol. Whatever the reason.....I never read any more books by William Kienzle. 30+ years later I am rectifying the situation, and coming back to see what trouble Father Koesler got himself into after that first book. I knew from the creepy cover to this second novel that I was in for something truly gruesome and exciting!

I was not disappointed.


The basics: During an adult confirmation ceremony at a Detroit cathedral, pandemonium breaks out when a child notices that the red cardinal hat suspended from the cathedral's ceiling has an actual human head in it. Police are baffled as to why someone stuffed local gangster Rough Rudy Ruggiero's severed head into the huge red religious symbol. That's just the start....more heads of local thugs show up in various churches across the city. The severed heads all bear grimaces of extreme horror and are perched on top beheaded statues of saints. The saints are chosen according to the sins of the murdered victims. Father Koesler is called on to help with the investigation and to provide information on the saints and various aspects of Catholicism as Detroit Police struggle to find clues and identify the serial killer.

The mystery is quite interesting in this second Father Koesler mystery. It has a little bit of everything in it......gruesome severed heads, Catholic mysticism, patron saints and even Voodoo.

I was loving this book clear up until the very end.....    The ending fell flat for me. Father Koesler discovers the identity of the murderer, but doesn't disclose it to the police. He says that it is something deemed a "Professional secret'' that he can't divulge. Really?? A priest knows the identity of a killer who murdered six people in a really horrible way, displaying the heads in churches.......and he doesn't tell the police? He allows them to close the case as unsolved? No matter how terrible the victims were....there is no excuse for that. But.....a church that covered up sexual abuse of children and other horrible crimes by its own clergy....I guess I can see the reality of a priest not revealing the identity of a murderer. My rating of this book chunks down a star because of the ending. Great mystery. Crappy ending.

There are 24 books in the Father Koesler series, written from 1978-2002. William Kienzle was able to incorporate the ins and outs of Catholic life, politics and the priesthood because he actually was a priest for 20 years before leaving the church.

I will definitely continue reading this series.....but I really did find the ending of this book to be an incredible let down. Bleck.