Flesh and Blood

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John Jordan is back—investigating eternal mysteries woven into the fabric of everyday life. Within the confines of seemingly ordinary cases, John explores the ineffable and inexplicable, the profoundly mysterious within the mundane.

In this diverse collection of cases, John investigates the Shroud of Turin, a pregnant virgin, a daring prison break, a Hurricane Katrina orphan who might just be the Second Coming, a desperate woman who sleeps with one too many men, a bloody body on the rec yard, a mystery that turns on a single observation, and a murder in which John himself is the prime suspect—all this as he deals with depression and battles alcoholism.

These stories are puzzles, whodunits, and enigmas, but they are much more. John Jordan doesn't just solve crime, he investigates the hidden heart of humanity and the mysterious world in which we live. Here are temporal answers and eternal questions, and at the center of it all, a conflicted man of faith and doubt, flawed, but faithful, who ministers mercy even as he thirsts for justice.

 

Introduction
by Margaret Coel

There is a distinct pleasure in reading an anthology of short stories featuring the same character. Each story explores a different aspect of the character’s life and shines the spotlight on different parts of his or her personality. In the best of such anthologies, the stories build upon one another, adding layer after layer of complexity and contradiction until the character’s inner life—the most guarded thoughts and feelings—are exposed, and in the process, we, the fortunate readers, are able to gain a deeper insight into our own guarded thoughts and feelings. And isn’t that the true value of stories? We open an anthology and begin reading, anticipating both the pleasure to come from the reading itself and the way in which the stories will take us outside of ourselves for a brief time and provide a new perspective that can help us to make sense of our own lives.

Flesh and Blood and Other Stories by Michael Lister is that kind of enriching experience. The character whose life opens up for us is John Jordan, a man of irony and contradictions, which make him real, like an old friend we thought we knew who continues to surprise us. He’s an ex-cop and an alcoholic struggling to hold onto sobriety and sometimes failing. An ex-cop in recovery, he says of himself, and now a chaplain at a tough prison in the northern gulf region of Florida. He wears a clerical suit and collar, yet finds he has little in common with other men in clerical suits and collars. He navigates the rocky shoals of racial tensions in a place where old prejudices still run beneath the surface of things—”a white man at home among blacks, underprivileged and oppressed. “ He’s in love with Anna. “The one,” he says,” and the one who got away.”

He’s also a superb detective, this John Jordan, often called upon to investigate the inexplicable and sometimes unsolvable cases. Ex-cop and chaplain, he is part Sherlock Homes and part Father Brown. What he brings to the investigations is the combination of Sherlock’s powers of observation—the ability to see details others overlook—and Father Brown’s openness to the fundamental mysteries at the heart of life. Those are the mysteries that infuse these stories. Even after Jordan has solved the crime, wrapped up all the facts, provided the answers, the fundamental mysteries linger, reminding us that not everything in life is knowable or solvable.

Four of the stories might seem like typical mysteries with ingenious and suspenseful plots that challenge Jordan’s powers of deduction. Yet by the endings, we’ve glimpsed the larger mysteries at the center of the stories—mysteries that recede from our grasp like clouds drifting overhead. In “Bad Blood,” an elementary teacher is found bludgeoned to death on the prison grounds. Jordan uncovers the facts and apprehends the killer, but the mystery of the infectious nature of evil and its power to spread into the most unlikely human hearts remains just that—a mystery.

“Blood Bought” and “Blood-Red-Rec-Yard-Ruse” brings Jordan face to face with the mystery of love and the way it exerts control over the human heart and will. And in the brilliantly plotted “A Taint in the Blood,” Jordan struggles with the darkness in his own heart and with the possibility that his theory about “the great disconnect of prison”—the vast difference between how someone appears and what he may be capable of doing—may also apply to him.

Running through all of the stories is the mystery of divine grace and the way it can penetrate even the darkest places. The stories are religious in the best sense of the term—open to possibilities. Jordan is a chaplain with more questions than answers, yet he recognizes that grace—the sign of God’s presence in the world—is capable of manifesting itself through the most unlikely people and in the most surprising situations. “Flesh and Blood” begins with the mystery of a pregnant nun who happens to be a virgin and concludes with the mystery of forgiveness and the way in which it can heal the human heart. In “A Fountain Filled with Blood,” Jordan confronts the fundamental mystery that the truth may be something other than what is apparent when he is drawn into the case of a ten-year-old black girl who says she is Jesus returned to earth—and gives every indication that she just might be.

The remarkable story, “Image of Blood,” weaves together the various strands that run through the anthology—mysteries of the human heart, of relationships and of God’s presence in the world. At the request of his dying mother, Jordan sets out to determine whether the Shroud of Turin might be the actual cloth that had wrapped the body of Jesus following the crucifixion. His search through the scientific studies for what is real and authentic about the shroud becomes a metaphor for his relationship with his alcoholic mother. The facts he uncovers—the certainties—only lead to deeper questions. What is more important, fact or faith? Can something be at once real and unreal? Ironically, it is the mystery of the shroud rather than the facts that begins to heal the broken relationship. As Jordan says, the shroud “works its magic.”

Indeed, mystery and magic fill these stories. They are in the richness of the language, such as the descriptions of the north Florida landscape with Spanish moss hanging from oak branches, forests so thick they block out the light, and the dark, greenish-black water of a slough filled with cypress trees. They are in the remarkable insights into men who are imprisoned—into what makes them want to live and want to die. They are in the deft details that reveal Jordan and the characters with whom he interacts. He can spot a murderer by instinct, he says, “by the pale green teardrop tattoos at the corners of his vacant eyes.”

And mystery and magic are in the journey that we take with John Jordan into the unseen wonders permeating all of life, beyond the facts and the data and what we might imagine is the extent of reality. The idea that God’s grace might illuminate even the darkest, most violent and disjointed places may be startling, even unsettling, but it is also comforting. That is what the best stories do: they startle and unsettle us and, in the process, expand our view of reality. Most of all, they touch us, perhaps with God’s grace.

Margaret Coel
Boulder, Colorado
July 2006

 

*** Michael Lister: Flesh and Blood and Other John Jordan Stories, Pottersville, $24.95. These seven stories featuring complex and engaging Florida prison chaplain Jordan represent various suspense and puzzle-spinning approaches, but the most memorable are centered on theological mysteries: a nun who is medically declared both pregnant and a virgin; a 10-year-old Hurricane Katrina refugee who claims to be Jesus Christ; and a consideration of the pros and cons of the Shroud of Turin. Margaret Coel, whose own novels feature a painfully chaste relationship somewhat similar to Jordan's with a prison coworker, provides an introduction.
Ellerry Queen Mystery Magazine

One of the most intriguing characters in Florida fiction is back on the job. John Jordan, the prison chaplain whom novelist Michael Lister created in “Power in the Blood” and “Blood of the Lamb” has resumed his duties in “Flesh and Blood.” The collection of short stories takes readers inside Potter Correctional Institution and into deep daily mysteries that Jordan is compelled to solve.

Crime is the catalyst for Jordan's investigations, and his workplace provides abundant opportunities. Lister draws on his own experiences as a prison chaplain to take readers inside that claustrophobic world.

But chaplain Jordan also deals with mysteries of the heart, of faith and of the human condition. All of this is played out against the backdrop of his private struggles with alcohol, with depression and with complicated relationships with family, lovers and friends.

Each of the seven stories in “Flesh and Blood” provides a separate character study of Jordan. That character includes a strong current of spirituality — whether he likes it or not. The current runs outside the prison walls as well as within, often bumping up against Jordan's skepticism and strong sense of reason.

Jordan meets a young nun who is a virgin but is pregnant, a refugee from Hurricane Katrina who just could be Christ returned, and a preacher and his wife caught up in a church member's life gone fatally wrong.

In the final story, “Image of Blood,” Jordan's dying mother asks him to investigate the healing powers of the Shroud of Turin. The quest becomes a metaphor for a troubled journey of faith by mother and son together.

The “Flesh and Blood” stories remain grounded, however, in a physical world of grit and desperation. Jordan's job in a prison in a small Panhandle town makes sure of that.

In “Bad Blood,” an elementary school teacher turns up dead just inside the prison fence. In “The Blood-Red Rec Yard Ruse,” it's a corrections officer whose corpse presents a mystery. Both cases sorely test Jordan's powers of observation.
Outside the walls, Jordan himself becomes a suspect, in the story “A Taint in the Blood.” It begins with a simple, ominous sentence: “I was drinking again.”

Lister, who lives in Wewahitchka, also makes use of a sharply honed sense of place in the “Flesh and Blood” stories. That's a bonus for readers who live in Bay and Gulf counties.

His lyrical descriptions of gulf and beach, of lonely rural highways and of small-town scenes take us to places we all know well. But we see them, through John Jordan's eyes, in a new light.

Readers who pick up “Flesh and Blood” will look forward to getting to know those places, as well as Jordan, even better.
David Vest Newsfeatures Editor, Panama City News Herald

"In this story collection from former prison chaplain Lister, his fictional alter ego, John Jordan, investigates seven "cases" that range from standard fair play tales to explorations of faith. Some stories are reminiscent of Ed Hoch's impossible crime tales and demonstrate talent at traditional mystery writing. Others are pure parable [and] will appeal to a Christian audience."
Publisher's Weekly

"Mystery and magic fill the stories of Flesh and Blood.  They are in the richness of the language, the remarkable insights, the deft details, and the brilliant plotting. Michael Lister's stories do what the best of stories do: they startle and unsettle us and, in the process expand our view of reality. Most of all, they touch us, perhaps even with God's grace."
Margaret Coel, best-selling author of Eye of Wolf

"John Jordan is a superb detective, an ex-cop and prison chaplain, he is part Sherlock Holmes and part Father Brown, combining Holmes' powers of observation and Brown's openness to the fundamental mysteries at the heart of life."
Margaret Coel, best-selling author of Wife of Moon

 

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