Professor James Mystery Books in Order

The Professor James Mystery series begins with Clerical Error, a historical mystery by Declan Finn and John Konecsni. It shifts away from Finn's usual large-scale fantasy action and focuses on a smaller, more grounded puzzle in 1976 New York City.

James is a college philosophy professor with more time than he knows what to do with. When an old classmate asks him for a favor, he agrees without expecting that a simple visit will put him at the center of a suspicious death.

The setting matters. New York is going through a difficult period, and the parish at the center of the story sits in Bedford-Stuyvesant, between violent crime and organized crime. James's old classmate, Father Gus Sadowski, is trying to keep Saints Gabriel, Columcille, and Rocco functioning with little help. The priest living in the attic, Father Timothy A. Lessner, is not making things easier.

Then Lessner dies in a fall down the stairs.

The apparent accident turns James's favor into an investigation, especially when circumstances make him look like a possible suspect. He must sort out parish tensions, personal grudges, and a city where people often have reasons to keep quiet. The book takes a cozy-mystery framework but gives it sharper urban surroundings and a period atmosphere.

Readers should expect a puzzle built around people, place, and motive rather than a supernatural war. The religious setting is important because it creates the social world of the case, but the central question remains simple: who had reason to kill a troublesome priest, and how can James prove it before the suspicion settles on him?

Start with Clerical Error. It is the first Professor James Mystery and establishes James, Father Gus, the parish setting, and the series' blend of historical New York detail and amateur detection.