The Sorrowful Son

The Mercy and Justice Mysteries #6

by J.R. Mathis

Abraham Asher drops dead of an apparent heart attack at the end of the Myerton Softball League's All-Star Game. When Helen receives evidence he was poisoned, she begins to hunt for a killer.

Genres: Mystery

258 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2022

About the author

Susan Mathis was born in and grew up in an extremely small town in Alachua County, Florida where her family has lived for more than 100 years. When Susan was still very young, James (J.R) Mathis was born in a somewhat bigger small town about 100 miles south of where she lived. Within a decade, James' small town would become part of Orlando, the biggest tourist destination in the United States. He was not amused. That is how, while Susan was running barefoot, swimming in lakes full of alligators and feeding chickens, James was sitting in his bedroom reading books faster than his father could bring them home from the library.

Were James and Susan to write their love story, it would definitely be an enemies-to-lovers trope. They met in the library where he was working. He found her demands for books that he had to pull and bring to her so unreasonable that he actually turned her into the head librarian. She in turn was so anxious to drive him away that when some friends secretly set them up she laid out an entire speech about how miserable her life was (she is typically very upbeat). Little did she suspect that he had a passionate attraction to misery and they were married just over a year later.

Fast forward 26 years, three children, four grandchildren and 20 years of James working for the Federal government. He was diagnosed with a highly treatable but still very scary form of cancer. As so often happens, this brush with mortality inspired him to do something he’d always wanted to do, write a novel. After the publication of the second Father Tom Mystery, Susan joined him as coauthor. As far as the Mathises are concerned, writing together is the most fun a couple can have sitting at a computer.

Reviews

[Paula Corregan]

This book was enjoyable to read. Chief Helen Greer, along with her detective crew and her husband, Father Tom, investigate the suspicious deaths of seven people at the Golden Pines Assisted Living Center. The founder of Golden Pines, Abraham Asher, also dies under suspicious circumstances. Find out what happens next. I highly recommend this book to other mystery readers. I received an ARC of this book , and the opinion expressed is strictly my own.