At the center of Thomas M. Disch's novelThe Priestis Father Patrick Bryce, a Catholic priest with a present-day Minneapolis parish-and a pedophile past. He's spent time at a church-run retreat for priests of his type and returned "rehabilitated" and even better equipped to keep his vice active and hidden. That is, until the blackmail begins, and each demand tops the next. Fiendishly comic and darkly hypnotic,The Priestis a spellbinding work that builds at breakneck speed to its gripping, gruesome, and eerily romantic finale.