Most of the Fr. Ryan novels are locked rooom mysteries. I am lousy at figuring out whodunit, perhaps because I read really quickly and rely on the author to tell me whodunit (perhaps this is another way of saying I can be lazy about thinking?)
The rest of Fr. Greeley's fiction tends to be very emotionally uplifting (preachy at times), and filled cover to cover with the kind of people you just want to be friends with. The biggest problem I see is that he portrays only a privileged class and does not delve into the problems of the blue-collar Catholic trying to deal with, for example, the Church's outrageous views on birth control. H9ow does a Polish-surnamed auto worker in Hammtramk deal with seven children in a three-bedroom row house with one bathroom? Note I am not picking on Poles, just using that ethnic group as an example.
While I was raised RC, never in my life did I experience anything like the sense of community that permeates Greeley's books, and I doubted the reality he sets forth. In fact, I once wrote to him to tell him of a chronology problem that had raised its ugly head one of his books, and on the side I asked him if this sense of a community actually existed in the Catholic areas of Chicago. He responded with a very gracious note saying they would fix the chronology problem in the next edition, avowing that his books reflected the spiritual life of Catholics in the Chicago area, and lamenting the fact that I did not have that experience growing up.
He's a pretty interesting person, and I've often wondered what JP II thinks of him. Can't be too good.
