The Rosary Murders, a first novel by William X. Kienzle, is an old-fashioned thriller that doesn't unclench its grip on the reader until the final pages. A psychotic killer, loose in Detroit, brutally murders the most accessible people in the world: Catholic nuns and priests. His calling card: a black rosary wrapped around each victim's wrist.

Kienzle's meticulous description of each murder is chillingly graphic. The prose suddenly halts, and the slow-motion camera assumes control, as in the final scene of "Bonnie and Clyde" when the anti-heroes are gunned to smithereens….

Full of clichés, it is, nonetheless, compelling reading. When not lavishly depicting the slaughter of individual innocents, Kienzle vividly dramatizes American clerical life: the stale jokes, boredom, and over-indulgence in food, drink, and tobacco. The very names of the characters—Archbishop Mark Boyle, Monsignor O'Brien, Mother Mary Honora—nostalgically evoke a chapter in American Catholicism.

Father...