books in order

Anne Emery Books In Order

A Collins-Burke Mystery Books In Publication Order

  1. Sign of the Cross (2006)
  2. Obit (2007)
  3. Barrington Street Blues (2008)
  4. Cecilian Vespers (2009)
  5. Children in the Morning (2010)
  6. Death at Christy Burke’s (2010)
  7. Blood on a Saint (2013)
  8. Ruined Abbey (2015)
  9. Lament for Bonnie (2018)
  10. Though the Heavens Fall (2018)
  11. Postmark Berlin (2020)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Keening (2021)

A Collins-Burke Mystery Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Anne Emery Books Overview

Sign of the Cross

Monty Collins is a sharp tongued public defender who just wants to represent an upstanding character for a change. A priest with something to hide isn’t quite what he had hoped for, but when the literate, arrogant, and tight lipped Father Brennan Burke is implicated in the strange murder of a young woman, Monty doesn’t just take the case the case takes him. When Burke won’t come clean, Monty is forced to play private detective, traveling into his client’s past. Things look good for the case until another body is found, marked with the same telltale sign as the first. Burke keeps mum, alternate suspects are ruled out, and the trial looks like it might be lost before deliberation. As if it couldn’t get any worse, Monty’s wisecracking ex wife enters the picture, and she seems to know more about Burke than Monty does. Evidence and coincidence pile up, leading to a revelation neither Monty nor the reader see coming.

Obit

Long ago, Declan Burke fled Ireland in the dark of night, started a new life in New York City, and has never looked back until one morning he picks up the newspaper and reads the obituary of one Cathal Murphy. He sees at once that the obituary is not about Murphy at all, but is instead a coded summary of his own life and probably a thinly veiled death threat. After turning to an attorney for advice, Declan decides not to reveal his IRA past, but keeping old secrets becomes much more difficult after a burst of gunfire at a family wedding and the appearance of Leo Killeen, the commanding officer of Declan’s former battalion in Dublin. The subsequent discovery of a body in a rundown Brooklyn flat brings other enigmatic characters onto the scene, including a woman nursing a grudge; a shady importer of Irish artifacts; the owner of a nightclub frequented by the New York mob; a sultry chanteuse; and Declan s hotheaded son Francis, whose resentment and criminal activities force Declan, the past master of self control, to confront the suspicion that he has been manipulated all along by an unseen hand.

Barrington Street Blues

A rich man and a poor man are found dead of gunshot wounds outside a seedy bar on Barrington Street. The police declare it a murder suicide, but bluesman/lawyer Monty Collins suspects it’s a double murder. Helped by his friend, Father Brennan Burke, and hindered by his femme fatale law partner, Felicia Morgan, Monty explores the dark side of Halifax society: hookers, drug addicts, boozers, gamblers and people desperate to cover up a series of parties that got way out of hand. A threat of blackmail, and turmoil with his estranged wife Maura, have Monty singing the blues, lashing out at his closest friends, and spending far too much time in the bars of Halifax.

Cecilian Vespers

Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is used to defending murderers and occasionally investigating murders himself but he’s never come up against anything like the case of Reinhold Schellenberg, a world renowned German theologian who has been found dead on the altar of an old church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saint Cecilia’s day. The controversial priest, once a top insider in the Vatican, was known to provoke strong feelings in Catholics of all ideological stripes, and now those feelings have overflowed with horrifying results. At least Monty knows where to look for clues; his friend Father Brennan Burke has just opened a choir school at the church, and the students provide an international cast of suspects including a flamboyant Sicilian priest, an eccentric English monk, a disgruntled American, a Vatican enforcer, a church lady with a history of violence, and, most perplexing of all, a police officer from the former East Berlin.

Children in the Morning

When Beau Delaney, the Halifax hotshot whose exploits are the subject of a new Hollywood film, is charged with the murder of his wife Peggy, it’s lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins who takes the case. But when Beau s family dynamics and the appearance of a mysterious child alert Monty that his client is keeping secrets, others join in to help keep Beau from a life in prison. Monty s pal, Father Brennan Burke, has a hand in the investigation, as does Monty s estranged wife, Maura. Watching all this is Normie, Monty and Maura s daughter, who has the gift of second sight. When she starts having visions that involve Beau, she can t tell whether they reflect something he s done in the past or something he might do in the future. It then becomes clear that Normie and Monty must rely on each other to discover the truth about Peggy s death.

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