The Detective's Dilemma: A Contemporary Small Town Police Mystery

The Myerton High School Mules football team are coming off their first winning season in years and looking forward to an even better one. The team is in great shape, and under their second year coach they’re really coming together as a team.

But all is not well with some of the players. Several of them were involved in incidents where the police were called. A couple of players were arrested for petty theft. Overall, members of the team are bigger and more aggressive than anyone remembers them being.

All of this has Helen concerned. But what concerns her more is the peculiar behavior of her chief detective, Dan Conway. He seems distracted, and has gone out of his way to downplay the incidents involving members of the football team.

During all of this, Doctor Martin Maycord finds evidence of a potentially dangerous new drug being used by Myerton’s young people. Helen asks Dan to look into it.

Then Martin is hit by a car in front of the hospital. What happens next not only threatens the future of the football team, but Helen’s relationship with Dan.

The Detective’s Dilemma is the thirteenth novel in the Mercy and Justice Mystery series, a contemporary small town mystery series. The series is a sequel to the Father Tom Mysteries that began with The Penitent Priest and includes the same cast of characters. It features Father Tom Greer, a Catholic Priest who is also an amateur sleuth in the tradition of Father Brown, and his wife Helen Greer, female Chief of Police and detective in the tradition of Kinsey Millhone.