The Murder Book

January 18, 2016
Early in Adams’s absorbing 11th mystery featuring former policewoman Naomi Blake (after 2014’s Paying the Ferryman), 18-year-old Leanne Bolter, a first-year student at a small Midlands university, is found eviscerated in her bedroom one morning. On viewing the mutilated body, Det. Insp. Tess Fuller can’t help thinking of Jack the Ripper. And yet Leanne’s flat mates, who were sleeping nearby, heard nothing the night before. The crime bears similarities to an unsolved murder that was investigated 15 years earlier by Det. Insp. Joe Jackson, who has since retired in disgrace. Tess consults Naomi, who once served under Jackson and might have insights into how he might have mishandled the earlier case. Tess soon must contend with a team from Internal Affairs reviewing her every step as she tries to suss out patterns and links in other unsolved homicides from around the time of the earlier murder. Fans of contemporary British police procedurals should be well satisfied.

January 1, 2016
A band of amateurs competes with numerous police officers to solve a grisly crime. DI Tess Fuller and her sergeant, Vin Dattani, are shocked by the scene they find at Penfold House, a student accommodation on Curzon Street in London. Leanne Bolter lies in her bedroom, slit from throat to pelvis and eviscerated, and none of her flatmates seems to have heard a thing. While Fuller, assisted by DCI Field, former DI Trinder, DS Cooper, and DS Briggs, searches for clues, Nathan Crow, protege of Secret Service agent Gustav Clay, inveigles his friend Gregory into a little sleuthing. Both Tess and Gregory have strong ties to Naomi, formerly Blake (Secrets, 2013, etc.) but now wife of Alec Friedman. Naomi's bored, partly because she was forced to retire from police work after losing her vision, partly because Alec is distracted by continuing education classes he's taking following a near-fatal car accident. So she becomes a sounding board for Tess and, to a lesser extent, for Gregory until the investigation threatens to disinter the Joe Jackson case. DI Jackson was Naomi's mentor until he retired in disgrace, in part for endangering Alec once before when an undercover case went bad. Jackson also investigated the death of Rebecca Arnold, whose murder bears striking similarities to Leanne's. But the more Tess tries to follow Jackson's footsteps, the more friction she sparks between Naomi and Alec, until evidence surfaces that Leanne and Rebecca may not have been the killer's only victims. Combining police procedural with elements of psychological suspense and spy thrillers produces a murky mess likely to please aficionados of none of the above.

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February 15, 2016
The tenth Naomi Blake mystery finds Naomi and her husband, Alec, adjusting to a dramatic new phase in their lives. She is now blind due to an accident, and Alec has retired; though no longer police officers, they are not finished with investigations. When a young student at a nearby university is brutally murdered, the police discover links to a series of cold cases. DI Tess Fuller and her partner, DS Vin Dattani, discover that the investigating officer on one of the old cases, Joe Jackson, thought he knew the identity of the perpetrator. Jackson, now dead and discredited, cannot help, but Naomi, his protegee, may have useful information. Along with Naomi and Alec, who play background roles in the intricate story, readers hear from the primary investigators, the students affected by the death of their friend, and some mysterious friends of the retired sleuths. This is a fine British procedural that will engage readers immediately and hold their attention until justice is done.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2016
The author of the modern-day-set Naomi Blake mysteries launches a new series set nearly a century ago. It's 1928, and DCI Henry Johnstone of Scotland Yard is handed a difficult assignment: find out who's responsible for several murders in the market town of Louth, in Lincolnshire. It'll be decades before the term serial killer is first used, but that's what Johnstone fears he's dealing with. He's also dealing with a local police force that would like nothing more than a quick wrap-up of the case (with minimal fuss, please and thank you) and with colleagues who view him as rather eccentric and annoying for his use of cutting-edge forensic and investigative techniques. ( Cutting edge is a relative conceptJohnstone isn't taking DNA samples; he's merely insisting on getting some pictures of the crime scene and taking a few notes.) The story works on several levels: as a murder mystery, but also as a character study (Johnstone really is a fascinating fellow) and as a story about the battle between radical new ideas and conventional approaches. A fine start to what one hopes will be a long-running series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 17, 2016
Set in England in 1928, this accomplished series launch from Adams (A Murderous Mind and 10 other Naomi Blake mysteries) introduces Chief Insp. Henry Johnstone of Scotland Yard. George Fields, poor but proud, often spends weeks away from his wife and their seven-year-old daughter, who live in rural Lincolnshire, in order to make a meager living on fishing boats. After one such absence, he returns home to find that workmen have unearthed the bodies of his wife and child from a hole in the yard of the cottage the family was renting. Johnstone and his sergeant, Mickey Hitchens, investigate, but clues are few and far between. When a local landowner’s son is killed in an apparent riding accident, his death appears to be unrelated, but the Scotland Yarders eventually discover links with the earlier death. The great strength of this well-crafted whodunit lies in the author’s depiction of how her characters struggle to live as best they can in an economically depressed and changing world. Adams delivers more than one surprise en route to the satisfying ending.