Turkstra had had a Calvinist father and a Roman Catholic mother. It was his father who had given him the name Calvin, and his mother who had added Truman, after the president. "I preferred Truman, and suspected my deepest leanings were in the liberal directions set by that man from Missouri." But he liked "the wonderful Reformed way we had of romanticizing our self-loathing - almost deifying our shortcomings. Masked in self-hatred, we all knew we were the chosen - as long as we never forgot, and continued to feel remorse for the fact that we were truly scum, dropped, dripping and whining, from the muck that was our lives without Christ."

His church is "hardly a church, really a reburbished shopfront" and he himself is not always immediately recognised as a minister as he likes wearing a T-shirt, on the front of which "was a faded photo of the Rolling Stones. On my head I wore a University of Michigan baseball cap". He realised that "the way I dressed was sometimes more a problem than it was worth". Even his hair could look "stringy, tied in the back with a rubber band".

Christopher H Meehan (1949 - ) was a prize-winning reporter for the Grand Rapids Press in Michigan, working on health and medical stories, and religion editor of the Kalamazoo (Mich) Gazette. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Michigan State University and a bachelor's degree in English literature and theology from the University of Detroit.

He has written four mystery novels, and co-authored Flourishing in the Land, a hundred-year history of Christian Reformed Missions in North America, and Gathered at the River: Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Its People of Faith. He is married with four children, and lives in Grand Rapids in Michigan.

Deadly Waters (1995)
Deadly Waters has Rev Turkstra being asked by the president of Redeemer Seminary to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Sam Hammersma, the seminary's star historian, who "had gone out in his sailboat one Friday afternoon in mid-June and had not returned". The police had discovered his empty boat - but there was no sign of any occupant, and his body had never been found. "You ready for some snooping around?" the president had asked Turkstra. To Turkstra, "Snooping is a form of theology ... a way of getting at the truth", and he vigorously sets about the task. Luckily he hardly ever seems to have any church work to keep him busy, and anyway the president offers him "one of our top theology students for the next week or so for pulpit work".

Turkstra starts by going to see Marlan Oosterbaan, Holland's police chief and an old childhood friend. He discovers that the detective who had done the investigation was Bruce Slade, who had been far from being a childhood friend. Slade does not prove to be very helpful. And the more Turkstra discovers about the missing man, the more mysteries are uncovered. Had he committed suicide? Was he suffering from cancer or from AIDS? And had he made a second will that did not leave everything to his widow?

The story gets increasingly interesting as it unfolds. And the author's deep but unsentimental affection for the local countryside and people shines through: "I could tick off the names of the families who once lived - and in many cases still lived - in these homes. Nearly every one of Dutch stock, diluted (some would say polluted) by an occasional intermarriage with Poles, Germans and Irish. In these homes, and on these fields, resided a great pre-ordained force. As God's chosen, they labored hard, prayed fervently and stayed to themselves ... This enclave from which I had risen was walled in by beliefs that made the people feel special, if only by their rigid separation. As part of the cause, emerging from this Calvinist sustem of belief was a fierce commitment to the work ethic, which made many of these people prosperous."

Turkstra, who finds "strength and courage and true Christian caring in the strangest places", is usually stronger on practical compassion than profound spiritual insights. After a violent and exciting climax, he asks his old friend police chief Marlan, "Does it strike you that all this may be part of God's will?"
Marlan shook his head, "No, Calvin, it doesn't. Not one bit. If God's will is AIDS and adultery and me having to kill the guy who was once my good friend, then I'd have to be looking for another God."

The book ends with Turkstra's (one and only) sermon. "What I know," he admits, "is that why we do what we do, and why God does what He does, is incomprehensible". But he bows his head and prays. Altogether, a well-written and quite interesting story.

Murder on the Grand (1997)
Murder on the Grand starts with the Rev Calvin Truman Turkstra visiting his fiancée, Monica Smit, in hospital. She has three broken ribs and contusions on her face as a result of being attacked and thrown down a flight of stairs. She is hoping to become a minister in his church, so is it more than a coincidence that the body of a female seminary student had been found floating in Michigan's Grand River? Then another woman is strangled, and the letters p and k are found scrawled on her bedroom walls. Could this be the work of the so-called Promise Keepers who are bitterly opposed to women who want to be allowed to preach in the Christian Reformed Church? Turkstra is determined to find out.

Detective Manny Rodriguez is, at first, prepared to share information with him, but eventually advises him, "Take care of Monica, go back to being a minister. Leave the rest to us". Turkstra reflects, "There he was being bossy, just when I thought we were starting to be bosom buds". Helped by Monica's retarded brother Bob, Turkstra eventually, in a dramatic climax, identifies the murderer - and even changes his own mind about the role of women in the ministry, so that at the end he is more than happy to attend Monica's ordination service.

Turkstra cannot help admiring how Monica "held to Christianity at its prickly core." Hers was "a religion, at least when practiced by a few believers, that was no theory. It was real and it worked. It's just that at times you got broken but good for the reaching out you did". But Turkstra himself with his "faulty hold on faith" still wonders, "How come the Lord, if this was his world, let such awful things happen? Even worse, how could he let persons who professed his name act like such jackals?" He also has his own memories (of Ruth, a woman from his own past who met a violent death) to come to terms with.

It all makes quite a strong plot, and Turkstra himself always holds the interest, but its not too easy to identify with some of the other less interesting characters.

Blood on the Bridge (1999)
Although it is still set in Michigan, The Rev Turkstra does not appear in this story.

Murder on Sacred Ground (2006)
Murder on Sacred Ground sees Turkstra's return, after a gap of nine years. The murder of the adopted daughter of a dying Christian Reformed Church pastor leads to Turkstra offering a 25,000 dollar reward (given to him by the dead girl's father) for information leading to the arrest of her killer. Turkstra is attacked, and a man's body is found in the cathedral. Turkstra goes on to learn of the possible existence of a mysterious document that could make or break a Native America tribe's bid to build a gambling casino south of Grand Rapids, and this sets him off on a frantic journey from his rural community church near Grand Rapids to the dangerous streets of Detroit.

Turkstra's own recourse to violence in this story does not make him as endearing a character as he had been in earlier books, and his religious convictions are now far from sure: "I thought for a moment that God, in his everlasting wisdom, made a big mistake when he called me to be a minister. At times, and this morning was one, I didn't know if I even believed in him. Facing life's wretchedness always made me feel this way". As pastor of his local community church, he is no longer a CRC pastor and says, "I felt freer, less bound by what I considered silly rules". Towards the end, though, he realises that "my ministry was no longer a ministry. It was a chaotic tumble downhill."

There are numerous unpleasant and unscrupulous characters,yet despite the vicious assaults and shoot-outs, all these violent events fail to be as exciting as the author must have intended. Perhaps this is because it is difficult to identify with, or care too much about, so many of the characters. The arch criminal the Muslim (?) Jamal, and the ever resourceful Roman Catholic priest Father Zerba really do strain credibility.

A character who does come to life in an endearing eccentric way is Bob, the retarded man, bear-sized brother to Turkstra's girl-friend Monica Smit (strangely enough, there's much more about Bob than Monica in this story. One of the previous books is partly dedicated to "the real Bob", so he is obviously based on someone the author knew). You feel for him, as when he comes out with pronouncements like "Blessed be the beekeepers" and happily traps a fly and puts it in his mouth.
"Does he do this often?" asks Dezi, a prostitute involved in the case for whom Bob has taken a shine.
"What?" asks Turkstra.
"Eat insects."
"Only when he's sulking."
"Big guy, that's sick", Dezi said.
"Dumb cluck," he said, swallowing the fly.
"Your not so dumb. You just have bad habits," said Dezi.
"Super size!"

In his foreword, the author thanks "the guy who told me to keep going when I wanted to stop". But you can't help feeling that his heart was not quite in it.

There is little about Christopher Meehan on the web, except for a brief interview in The Albuquerque Tribune.



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