"Creatures of Habit" by Pat Mullan

Above: "Creatures of Habit." - Pat Mullan - 330 Pages

Implied in the exchange is the author's self satisfaction in conceiving the clever, triple entendre novel title.

I completed reading this novel, published in 2014, today. Pat Mullan and Mwah (sic) were work colleagues on the Citicorp Savings of Florida thrift turnaround project in Miami in the late 1980's. When I knew him back then, Pat, an Irishman, was a highly sought after project/systems/MIS guy at Citibank... he worked in Canada, the UK, and the US before returning to Ireland to write novels.

"Creatures of Habit" begins with two prepubescent school boys fleeing two priests, near midnight, with gale force winds blowing, on the grounds of a private Catholic boy's school somewhere in Ireland circa 1990's.

One of the boys dies while being pursued. At the time of the boy's death, occurring as a result of an accidental (coerced?) fall from a school yard bell tower, the two priests flee, as does the boy's accompanying friend. Prior to his death, the fleeing boy, fearing capture, hands his accompanying friend a cell phone asking his friend to hide the phone.

The authorities, who find the dead boy the next day, conclude that the he died of an accident or a suicide.

The perp priest on the late night, schoolyard chase is mysteriously, unexpectedly transferred from the school faculty to the Vatican where he'll work with his Cardinal mentor. The other (obviously less connected) priest on the chase survives an otherwise botched attempt on his life...he's run down by a car which is later found abandoned, stolen and burned to a crisp. The boy with the phone, living in fear, hides the phone in a little used school storage area.

The dead boy's dad doesn't buy the accident/suicide story. His son would never be out so late... and, he was a happy boy, never suicidal. Someone, Dad believes, should be located and held responsible for his son's death.

Dad calls his cousin, Ed Burke, a high powered Irish, New York City lawyer, then living with his girl friend in Miami. Burke has experience maneuvering the ins and outs of the Irish power structure. Dad asks him to come to Ireland to find out the truth behind his son's death.
And so begins a page turning thriller that combs the depth of homosexual child abuse in the Church, detailing the scope of a shadow organization of gay priests, "the Lavender Mafia," which predominates in the US and Ireland and reaches all the way to the Vatican.

Ever loyal to family, Burke leaves his comfortable existence in Miami and returns to Ireland.

Meanwhile, only days after the "accident," an "avenging angel" priest, a math teacher at the same Catholic boy's school, begins a spate of killings of ecclesiastical figures supposedly connected to The Lavender Mafia, whom he, alone, determines are in need of God's judgement.

Burke determines that but for the boy's death, the math teacher priest would not have started his vigilante pursuit of putative evil doing prelates. While the authorities have to find the murdering priest and hold him to account for his evil deeds, the Irish public, on some level, harbors sympathy for his work of vigilante vengeance against allegedly venal Church officials.

Burke, himself, becomes a target whose life is threatened. But, threatened by whom?

The deeper Burke digs, the more he finds that power players from the Church and wealthy Irish industrialists who fund major church projects, are eager that this story go away. After all, the boy's death was an accident... not murder. A sad incident, to be sure, but not a crime.

There is too much Church dirty laundry "to air in public," particularly after a spate, in the US and Ireland, of outed priestly indiscretions with twelve year old alter boys. Moreover, the one priest with the most to lose... the one who chased the boy to his death... is a "corporate property" priest, coming from one of Ireland's most "connected" families, on the fast track to becoming Cardinal. He's safely hiding in the Vatican... waiting for all this hub bub to die down.

But, Ed Burke is screwing things up! His sleuthing is keeping alive that which should be buried.

Read the book for the denouement of this exciting page turner. What happened to the other boy? What, if anything, was on the phone hastily transferred by the victim to his friend? Was the up and coming priest, hiding at the Vatican outed publicly as the boy's pursuer? Does the insidious cabal linking the Irish corporate power structure and the Church remain intact? Is vigilante justice sometimes justified?

The novel exposes the underside of today's Catholic Church...institutional pedophilia, right wing religious fanaticism, and corporate financial influence in Church matters.

There is, obviously, another side to the institutional Church "coin..." the one where the Church underpins the progress and advancement of Western Culture... one where countless lives have been enhanced via faith in God and religious belief. But, you won't want to read this novel if your looking for this good side of the Church.

"Creatures of Habit" is Pat's fourth novel.

Note: "Creatures of Habit," in the eponymous novel, is a work in progress rant of the vigilante priest. Ed Burke, reading the screed/rant he has found while searching the vigilante priests house, gains insight into the vigilante priest's motives.

Burke, in the course of his investigation, asks the now-in-the-Vatican-up-and-comer-priest, and prospective next murder victim of the vigilante priest, what he thinks the title "Creatures of Habit" means. The up an comer priest replies with an unimaginative, literal definition. Implied in the exchange is the author's self satisfaction in conceiving the clever, triple entendre novel title.