[In True Confessions a] woman has been found murdered in a rundown section of Los Angeles. She has been neatly cut in half and left in a vacant lot; the press seizes upon the murder of "The Virgin Tramp" by a "Werewolf Killer." Beginning with the police, all Irish-Americans, who work on the girl's case, John Dunne weaves a story of the entire Irish-American community in Los Angeles for a few weeks in 1946. It is a story of layer upon complex interconnected layer of venality, corruption, taint, and animal energy seen through the eyes of two of the men intimately involved in the crime and the evils that ripple from it.

The two men are brothers. One is a rapidly rising, ambitious Machiavelli of a Monsignor, bucking for Cardinal. Desmond Spellacy, the Right Reverend Monsignor, would have been perfectly at home with the Borgias. He sees every step...