The Blue and the Black

About the Book

A married woman visits a Catholic priest, John Brennan, in the confessional on a Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, New York.  She doesn’t want to confess to him; instead, she wants to know if suicide is always a mortal sin.  She tells him she has ovarian cancer, as did her late mother, and doesn’t want to die from that.  She would rather kill herself and avoid all that suffering.  The priest is unable to dissuade her from her resolve.  All that she tells him about herself is that her name is Margaret and her husband’s name is Ed and that he is on the city’s police force.  She leaves the confessional and the priest is extremely troubled by his encounter with the woman.

Months earlier, Ed Fallon meets Louise Fitzgerald twice on the same Sunday afternoon.  The first time, he tickets her illegally parked car; the second, he is moonlighting as a security guard at a UN reception at the Plaza Hotel that she attends.  They flirt.  After 13 years of a happy marriage, he finds another woman fascinating.  She invites him over to her place that evening for a small party.  He agrees to go for no more than one hour.  When he arrives at her West Side Manhattan apartment he discovers that he is the only guest at the party.  Louise seduces him.

Ed and Lou begin to meet about once a week at her place.  They discover that they have more in common than just a sexual attraction.  She is an aspiring actress from Albany, New York.  He and his wife Margaret are deeply in debt from unsuccessful fertility treatments.  He works a lot of overtime to help pay off their debts and lies to Margaret as needed to explain his absences from home so that he can spend time with Lou.

Lou gets a small part in an off-Broadway play.  Ed begins to distance himself from his wife and stops sleeping with her.  He tells Margaret that, since God won’t give them a child, he finds all the joy is gone from their having sex.  She tries to understand his thinking and retains her faith that they will, over time, solve their problem.

Margaret goes on a vacation with Ed’s parents.  Ed and Lou go away for a few days together.  He tells her that Margaret’s father left her about $750,000 in his will.  It is in trust for her until her 35th birthday, two years off.  Her father hated Ed; Ed reciprocated the older man’s feelings.  He and Margaret owe $70,000.  If she were to die before her 35th birthday, the money would accrue to him.

Lou’s career opportunities improve.  Following a part in The Tempest, she may get a movie role.  Ed and Lou love each other but she enjoys the no-strings aspects of their relationship.  He is afraid that he will lose her to someone else if she goes out of town for a part in a movie.  He begins to consider what to do.  If he had a free and clear title to Margaret’s money, he would be able to quit the police force and accompany Lou wherever her career took her.

She gets a part in a Faulkner film requiring her presence in Mississippi.  Ed is desolate at the thought of Lou’s absence.  He broaches with her the idea of what to do about Margaret.  She asks him to go very slowly with his thinking and to await her return.  She offers to help him at that time.  He promises to raise the subject upon her return.  In the meanwhile he will begin to consider the possibilities.

Upon her return, they very gradually devise a scheme to murder Margaret.  It entails deceiving a Catholic priest into supporting the main idea of their ruse.

John Brennan, the priest, becomes a pawn in their game.  His life has been uncomplicated and he lacks the acumen to realize the extent of their deception.  During the funeral for Margaret he meets Ed Fallon, his parents and brother Peter and Margaret’s sister Mary.  As John learns more about Marg

About the Author

Jim Larkin is a husband and father, a grandfather, a retired actuary and a lover of a good story. He was born to Irish emigrant parents and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He has lived in Binghamton, New York and Hartford, Connecticut and now resides in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is currently writing his fifth novel and recently revised his second, The Blue and the Black. He hopes his characters come alive to his readers and their behaviors are not predictable. Their actions concur with and are in conflict with a notion of moral order and his people have to learn to accept the consequences of what they do. Reflected in all of Mr. Larkin’s writings are the persuasive influence of his Irish Catholicism, his love of music and his belief in the redemptive power of grace and forgiveness.