Hugh Mahoney

New Yorkers open their Sunday morning paper to find a photo of Virgil Quinn, teacher of history at St. Lucy’s School for Boys, splashed all over the front page. How did he get there? Scandal, of course. Virgil has made enemies—the Cardinal of New York not the least among them. The Cardinal’s research reveals that Virgil has lived many lives, all of them scandalous. Was he really a ranking nun in the Sisters of Mercy of Baton Rouge? Did he really walk the ramps of Seventh Avenue as the city’s highest paid supermodel? Just how did he come to know all those men whose names appear in his notorious (and deadly convenient) Black Books? Virgins & Martyrs is shrewd and malicious fun, a wicked commentary on love, life, gender and the history of our nation, a work in which the peripatetic and intrepid—yet all-too-human—Virgil Quinn lets no one off the hook.