William X. Kienzle was born in Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1954 and spent twenty years as a Roman Catholic parish priest. Kienzle left the priesthood in 1974 because of his disagreement with its refusal to remarry divorcees. He became an editor of MPLS Magazine in Minneapolis, later moving to Texas where he was director of the Center for Contemplative Studies at the University of Dallas

University of Dallas

The University of Dallas is a private, independent Catholic regional university located in Irving, Texas, established in 1956, which is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. According to U.S...

.

He was married to Javan Herman Andrews, a journalist from the Detroit Free Press

Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...

, from 1974 until his sudden death from a heart attack on December 28, 2001.

Kienzle was the author of twenty-four crime fiction/mystery novels featuring Father Robert Koesler, a Catholic priest who doubles as a detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

. One of his best known novels is his first, The Rosary Murders

The Rosary Murders

The Rosary Murders is a 1987 neo-noir mystery film starring Donald Sutherland as Father Koesler, based upon the novel by William X. Kienzle....

(1978), which was made into a 1987 movie starring Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

 as Father Koesler. Kienzle's books are set mostly in Detroit, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

.

Books

• The Rosary Murders (1978)
• Death Wears a Red Hat (1980)
• Mind Over Murder (1981)
• Assault with Intent (1982)
• Shadow of Death (1983)
• Kill and Tell (1984)
• Sudden Death (1985)
• Deathbed (1986)
• Deadline for a Critic (1987)
• Marked for Murder (1988)
• Eminence (1989)
• Masquerade (1990)
• Chameleon (1991)
• Body Count (1992)
• Dead Wrong (1993)
• Bishop As Pawn (1994)
• Call No Man Father (1995)
• Requiem for Moses (1996)
• The Man Who Loved God (1997)
• The Greatest Evil (1998)
• No Greater Love (1999)
• Till Death (2000)
• The Sacrifice (1999)
• The Gathering (2002)

His biography, Judged by Love, by Javan Kienzle, was published in 2003.