The young man lowered his voice, but sounded all the more intense for doing so. "Reverend," he said solemnly, "if God didn't do it, then it doesn't make any logical sense." "Oh, it makes perfect sense," the reverend replied. "It makes perfect, horrible sense." * * * The Reverend Thaddeus Dean has just retired as pastor of a small church at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. He is lonely, poor and desperately misses his wife who died years ago. Fortunately, he has a pastime. He solves murders that are so bizarre as to seem impossible.In each of the stories collected in this volume, Reverend Dean is challenged by a seemingly "impossible" crime. In one story, a pastor dies in front of his congregation when God appears in church and predicts his death. In another tale, three siblings are murdered - one on a sandy beach, one surrounded by wet paint and one in the middle of a mudflat - with no footprints near any of the bodies. In a third story, a woman is stabbed in her triple-locked, upper floor apartment.