Secrets

February 3, 2014
British author Adams's slow-paced eighth Naomi Blake mystery (after 2011's Night Vision) starts with a bang. Molly Chambers, the no-nonsense widow of a diplomat, confronts an intruder in her Midlands home just as he shoots himself in the head with a shotgun, which is later linked to two murders. Molly's "honorary" nephew, Det. Insp. Alec Friedman, who has recently resigned from the force, offers consolation. Reluctantly, Alec reconnects with the police in an effort to coax the silent Molly into telling the authorities what she knows about the suicide victim and possible killerâwho was someone she recognized. Meanwhile, Alec and his blind wife, Naomi Blake, strive to end their self-imposed homelessness, and start a new life together. A plethora of characters and subplots involving missing documents, secret identities, and dead bodies will leave readers struggling to discern what the real story is and who the key players are.

July 4, 2011
In Adams's stately fifth entry in her series featuring Rina Martin, a retired actress who once played a Miss Marpleâlike role on TV (after 2010's Resolutions), Rina accompanies her young friend Tim Brandon, a professional stage magician, and his fiancée, Joy Duggan, to historic Aikensthorpe House in rural Devon for a weekend conference on Tim's field. Rina stays afterward with the couple to attend a re-enactment of a séance held at Aikensthorpe in 1872. The slow-burning story line finally kicks in with the murder of the conference's luminary, psychic researcher Edwin Holmes. The tension rises as a winter blizzard prevents the guests' departure and delays the police's arrival. Despite the initial leaden pacing and some less than compelling flashbacks to Aikensthorpe's troubled past, Agatha Christie fans should enjoy this contemporary homage to the traditional English country house mystery.