David Carlson, a Franklin author and a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Franklin College, has released his newest mystery novel, “Suffer the Children: A Christopher Worthy and Father Fortis Mystery.” The book is now available.
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The march of time never stops, and things change over the years.
Relationships ebb and flow, while friendships evolve. One of the challenges of growing older is how to adapt to the new conditions and reckon with new circumstances.
The main forces in David Carlson’s mystery series, Father Fortis and Christopher Worthy, are faced with such a dilemma. That it comes as they attempt to solve a murder only makes it more difficult.
“Your characters are like people. They have to have the capacity to grow and change. That’s what I look for in each of the successive mysteries — how are they continuing their lives in a way readers will be comfortable with and how are they growing?” said Carlson, a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Franklin College.
Carlson’s mystery-solving duo are back in the new novel, “Suffer the Children,” the eighth in his series following Fortis and Worthy. Life has changed for the pair, as they work through personal issues in addition to uncovering clues behind the killing of a priest in Rome.
Their adventure spans from Italy to the desolate north of Canada, and will test their friendship as well as their sleuthing skills. Underlying the story is an examination about the refugee crisis and how children are too often the victims.
“I put my two characters in a situation, and just follow them along. I don’t know how it’s going to end,” Carlson said. “That was an important journey for me to make and find the questions the book was raising, initially to be questions for me, and I hope for readers to consider as well.”
Carlson has been crafting mysteries around Worthy, a highly decorated detective who is tortured by his inability to solve the one mystery that means the most to him, and Fortis, a Greek Orthodox monk, since he wrote their debut in 1995. Though that first book wasn’t published until 2016, Carlson has continued to put the pair at the center of unique and mind-bending mysteries.
“Suffer the Children” finds the two in the middle of a perplexing crime. In a Catholic orphanage for Indigenous children in the Northwest Territory of Canada, a fire has killed three boys. The priest leading the orphanage, Father Robert Porter, was passed out drunk — uncharacteristic, as he was not known as a drinker.
After the tragedy, Porter is sent back to Rome to determine if he should be defrocked. While there, he is murdered, stabbed in the back in the middle of the night in one of the city’s biggest piazzas.
“The questions (are), why was this guy, who had just come to Rome a few weeks prior, in this square three nights straight from midnight to 2 or 3 in the morning? Then, why was he stabbed to death the last time?” Carlson said.
Worthy, who has established a private detective office in Italy, is called in to help with the investigation. In turn, he calls in his own friend Fortis for support. Together, they explore the crime, and it’s possible reach back to the fire in Canada.
What they find is shocking, connecting to the idea of how pain by the displaced and trafficked — particularly of the youngest refugees — can reverberate around the world.
“That leads to the central idea for me: What if children were born with no nationality? No child chooses to be born in one place or another. Yet we treat the child as caught in whatever nationality or country they are in, and we treat them accordingly,” Carlson said. “It becomes clearer for me that God doesn’t see nationalities; he just sees children as what they are — these miracles of life.”
In addition to these heavy-hitting questions, Carlson also wanted to create tension between his two main characters. Part of the engine driving the story is the impending marriage of Worthy to an Italian professor.
“That connects to the previous mysteries, where he lost his marriage. There is a repeated phrase I use in the other mysteries, and in this one as well, that Worthy was going to end up living in ‘the graveyard of broken marriages,’” he said. “This one has him moving towards the surprise of love coming back into his life.”
The challenges this presents to the friendship between Worthy and Fortis creates added tension to the story.
“Father Fortis has been (Worthy’s) closest friend for the whole series,” Carlson said. “Now, he’s getting married and living part of the year in Europe. So Father Fortis is trying to come to grips with how the relationship with his friend has changed.”
With a number of different layers, “Suffer the Children” offers a depth and richness to the classic mystery formula. Carlson hopes readers find entertainment not only in the detective story, but in the message flowing throughout the plot as well.
“I think the book offers some surprises in terms of insights,” he said. “I think readers will find it a thoughtful, satisfying mystery. If they’ve read any of the others, they’ll be with these characters again. If they’ve never read any of them, they don’t have go back to the first one; these are self contained.”
