William X. Kienzle

William X. Kienzle is an American author best known for the Father Koesler Series, a series of highly popular mystery thrillers. Kienzle first started out as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church where he served for over two decades as a parish priest. Even as a priest, he was involved with writing as the editor in chief of the Michigan Catholic, the archdiocese’s newspaper. His work with the paper earned him a Catholic Press Association acknowledgment for excellence in editorial writing and a general excellence award in Journalism from the Michigan Knights of Columbus. He would leave the priesthood in 1974 after he became increasingly frustrated with canonical law that would not allow him to remarry divorcees. Kienzle’s first ever-published novel was the 1979 published “The Rosary Murders” that went on to become a huge fan favorite. After leaving the priesthood in 1974, William got married to Javan Herman Andrews, a veteran journalist working with the Detroit Free Press. Soon after, he got a job as the Editor in Chief at a Minneapolis newspaper, the MPLS Magazine. During his time working as editor at the magazine, Kienzle turned into a prolific writer, often penning one novel a year in his Father Koesler series. Over the course of about 20 years, he wrote 24 crime mystery novels in the series.