In Sister Mary Helen's latest venture as an inadvertent detective, the elderly nun must make do without her even more elderly sidekick, Sister Eileen. Eileen has gone back to Ireland to be with her dying sister, so Mary Helen has no one with whom to share her fears when the head of St. Francis College dies suddenly and is replaced by the coldly efficient Sister Patricia. Surely, Mary Helen feels, she will be swept aside as too old in the "clean

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Sister Mary Helen is in luck, depending on how you look at it. She and Sister Eileen are in Ireland to attend the weeklong Oyster Festival in the little village of Ballyclarin. They make their first stop at a central oasis of food and drink called the Monks' Table. Mary Helen overhears a woman saying to the man with her, "I am surprised someone hasn't killed you already." But Eileen assures her that it's only a way of speaking, and Mary Helen is relieved--until...