Professor of Theology Emeritus Harvey D. Egan, S.J., a 50-year member of the Boston College Jesuit community, is the inspiration for Father Ignatius Lacroix, the reluctant detective in the new Mighty Monk Mysteries book series by D. Ansgar Nyberg, in which an aging Jesuit scholar matches wits with a variety of evildoers. Much like G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and others in the clerical-investigator literary tradition, Fr. Lacroix doesn’t act in an official capacity; quite the contrary. He is intent on his teaching, research, and pastoral activities when—as is so often the case with amateur sleuths—a body gets in the way. The series’ first book, In Lent, The Cardinal Quit Singing, confronts Fr. Lacroix with the murder of a high-ranking ecclesiastical official at a retreat center, a situation rendered all the more chilling for its setting amid an ice storm. The priest’s analytical skills are tested anew in No Rest for the Wicked, in which he must connect the dots between two mysterious deaths occurring seven years apart, and yet again in The Silence of St. Bernard, in which he must unravel a web of deceit surrounding an abbey’s prized relic. Fr. Egan is a renowned expert on Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner and author of several books on Christian mysticism and other topics. Read more from BC News about how Fr. Egan and author D. Ansgar Nyberg are connected.