Little Altar Boy

On a snowy Thursday night in Chicago, there is a knock on Detective Hank Purcell’s door. Sister Mary Philomena has seen something terrible at Saint Fidelis Church?—?a violation of all she holds sacred. The next Monday, she is found murdered in the convent basement, next to a furnace stuffed with old papers and photographs. And Margaret, Hank’s teenage daughter, has disappeared. Hank and his unconventional partner Marvin Bondarowicz try to force their way through a wall of ecclesiastical silence to find the killer, while their search for Margaret takes them from swank lakeside flats to drug dens to south-side basement blues clubs…and the snow keeps falling.

"I am 13 years old. I just realized that I'm not as good-looking as my mom led me to believe. I wear two pairs of underwear . everywhere. These are my stories." It was 1985, and if you weren't a diehard Knight Rider fan then you probably wouldn't survive on the savage and perilous playground of St. Charles private school. It was a time unlike any other, filled with strange fashion choices, schoolyard extortion rackets, and first dates. It was a time for kids who stuck firecrackers in cats' asses, a time for pretending to be murdered to freak out neighbors, and a time for realizing that no one really liked you. It was the perfect time for a "Dirty Little Altar Boy." Middle-class, middle child, way uncool hair-these are the true confessions of a 13-year-old at the crossroads of junior high and hellfire eternity.

Unforgivable sins have been committed. The price must be paid. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Just how great must the sacrifice be in order to attain revenge? So much has been lost or stolen from her. Lives have been cut short. So much suffering has been endured. Some were still living through the pain. Ah, SWEET REVENGE.

It's the littlest altar boy's first day to serve, and he's a little nervous. What if he trips on his robe? What if his candle catches somebody's hair on fire? Young boys looking forward to serving as acolytes will identify with this boy's humorously depicted anxieties and breathe easier when all goes well.A picture book for children preschool age and up.

The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal--a string of assaults within the Catholic Church--exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications--including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors--pointing to him as Croteau's killer, the Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent." Drawing on more than 10,000 pages of police and court records and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth--church complicity in a cover up and the masking of priests' involvement in a ring of abusive clergy--behind Croteau's death and those who had a hand in it.