In the Bleak Midwinter

Julia Spencer-Fleming is writing a delightful series of mysteries that feature a female Episcopal priest.

In the first book in the series, In the Bleak Midwinter (©2002), a the Reverend Clare Ferguson, newly hired at St Alban’s Church in upstate Miller’s Kill, NY, finds a baby on the church steps with a note directing her to give the child to two of her parishioners.

Instead she calls the police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, and so begins a friendship between the devoted priest and the married cop that threatens to develop into something more.

When the body of the child’s mother turns up the spunky Clare, an ex-Army helicopter pilot, is called on to show her courage and her caring as her conservative congregation question her involvement in the murder investigation.