Solving crimes and saving souls: Fiorella de Maria discusses the Father Gabriel mysteries

Detective stories have been a popular and fascinating genre of fiction for decades, going back to the mid-nineteenth century.

From Sherlock Holmes to Father Brown, from Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot, from Nero Wolfe to The Maltese Falcon, stories of sleuths and tales of intrigue and mystery have been an indelible part of our cultural lexicon.

In recent years, Fiorella de Maria has added her name and that of her detective hero, Father Gabriel, to the annals of great detective fiction.

The Father Gabriel’s mysteries so far include The Sleeping Witness; The Vanishing Woman; See No Evil; Death of a Scholar; Missing, Presumed Lost; and now May Day!, just published by Ignatius Press.

De Maria is the author of numerous books—both fiction and non-fiction—published by Ignatius Press. In addition to the Father Gabriel Mysteries, she has penned several books in the Vision series of lives of the saints for young people (Hugh O’Flaherty: The Irish Priest Who Resisted the Nazis; Saint Maximilian Kolbe: A Hero of the Holocaust; Courage Under Fire: Father Willie Doyle, S.J., Hero of the First World War), and several standalone novels (A Most Dangerous Innocence; Do No Harm; Poor Banished Children; We’ll Never Tell Them; and This Thing of Darkness, together with K.V. Turley).  The prolific author, says Publishers Weekly, “deserves a wide audience.”

She recently spoke with Catholic World Report about the latest volume in the Father Gabriel Mysteries, her passion for crime fiction, and how fiction can be an opportunity for evangelization.

Catholic World Report: How did the book come about? And can you tell us a little about how the Father Gabriel series came to be, and a little about the series?

Fiorella de Maria: Crime fiction is my naughty little secret. I read my first Sherlock Holmes mystery at the age of seven, scared myself half to death, and have been hooked on murder mysteries ever since. I planned out the basic structure and characters with my mother-in-law (also an avid reader of crime novels) whilst we prepared the dinner one evening.

I based the series in the county of Wiltshire, in and around the towns and villages where I grew up. I have changed all the names, but the places are all based on real locations, and the series is in many ways an affectionate nod to my West Country childhood. The West Country is a beautiful part of the world. I used to think that the Shire was Wiltshire, and it has had a big influence on my writing.

I chose the late 1940s partly because the period immediately after the War was a very unsettled time–huge numbers of refugees trying to make a fresh start in a new country, men coming home from the fighting with their painful memories, people keen to bury secrets and reinvent themselves.

It provides a rich vein for a crime writer to tap into. All the members of the community are inspired to some extent by priests I know (mentioning no names), and I enjoyed putting together the cast of characters.

CWR: What are some of your influences for this series? Father Brown? Sherlock Holmes? Agatha Christie novels? And how did they influence you?

Fiorella de Maria: I read all the classic crime writers growing up and still enjoy reading them today–Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Conan Doyle–and I have been influenced in some way or other by all of them. Pretty much all crime writers are heavily influenced by Agatha Christie and the structure of her books; the isolated locations, the denouement, the unreliable and sometimes hostile police inspector, the unlikely detective figure.

The importance of little details and tiny clues is very much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes and his magnifying glass. Then, of course, there is Father Brown, the ultimate priest detective. I was probably more influenced by Fr Brown than any other detective in the creation of Fr Gabriel, with some hints of Brother Cadfael in the background, but I wanted Fr Gabriel to be both convincingly a priest and convincingly a Benedictine. I spent happy hours talking to an elderly Benedictine at Chilworth Abbey and he answered my every tiny question about pre-Vatican II monastic life.

I have tried as far as possible to make Fr Gabriel’s priesthood very central to his character and his detection. The reader will see him hearing confessions, celebrating Mass, pleading with the killer to repent, praying in the public gallery of the courtroom, and even entering the death chamber to accompany a killer on that last journey.

As a priest detective, Fr Gabriel is not just concerned with seeking out the truth, he wants to save souls.

CWR: Some people might wonder what sort of good things Catholics can derive from reading mystery stories. How would you respond to that?

Fiorella de Maria: It’s a reasonable question to ask, and certainly, murder may seem like an odd way to explore the beauty of the Catholic Faith, but the murder mystery genre is deeply Catholic at heart. One of the reasons the genre remains enduringly popular is that it is all about a moral authority figure determinedly searching for justice and truth, culminating in the restoration of the natural order.

Murder mysteries, by their very nature, explore the deeper questions of life, such as the value of human life itself, and Catholic authors have a great deal to contribute.

CWR: Chesterton’s Father Brown stories have a wide appeal even among non-Catholics. Do you think Father Gabriel would also appeal to non-Catholics?

Fiorella de Maria: I believe so. The series was considered for adaptation for television at one point. Unfortunately, it didn’t go ahead, but the director who picked up on the series was not Catholic and he wanted to focus on Fr Gabriel’s priesthood and monastic life, rather than dumbing it down as I had feared might happen. He evidently saw the appeal for a largely secular audience.

There is a fine tradition of religious sleuths from Fr Brown to Brother Cadfael; Poirot is a Belgian Catholic, and Sherlock Holmes, though non-religious, bears the traces of Conan Doyle’s Jesuit education in his methodology.

It is one of the few areas of fiction where faith can be openly expressed.

CWR: You’ve written several other novels, published by Ignatius Press. What sets the Father Gabriel Mysteries apart from these other works, in your approach, and what you’re trying to communicate to the reader?

Fiorella de Maria: Crime fiction has certain conventions associated with it, unlike literary fiction–the set list of suspects, the detective (and probably a sidekick of some description), the second crime, the denouement, which makes for a more structured creative experience.

What makes Fr Gabriel different from my other books is that it is a series, which has allowed me to develop the characters of Fr Gabriel and other members of the community, such as Brother Gerard (my favourite character after Gabriel) over several stories.

Ultimately, I am a storyteller, and I am here to spin a good yarn and (hopefully) entertain the reader. We sometimes lose sight of that when talking about literature. It is written primarily to entertain.

However, what I hope might set my murder stories apart is that I take the horror of murder seriously. I want readers to consider the moral consequences of murder for a family, for a community, even for the killer himself.

That is where Fr Gabriel’s priesthood is so central to the stories. A murder does not just leave a detective with a puzzle to work out, it leaves a community spiritually shattered.

• Related at CWR: “Investigating the art of murder mysteries: An interview with Fiorella De Maria” (June 12, 2024) by Rhonda Franklin Ortiz