False Report

January 23, 2012
Heley’s sixth Abbot Agency mystery, a slight improvement over 2011’s middling False Money, finds Bea Abbot at a turning point in her life. The domestic agency bearing her name is booming, but she can’t help wondering whether giving up control of its daily activities was a mistake, both in business and personal terms. Her M.P. son’s mentor, CJ, offers her distraction in the form of a murder case. CJ, “a mandarin used by the police as an expert in matters too complicated... for the ordinary man or woman to understand,” fears that he may have provided a false alibi for an acquaintance, Jeremy Waite, whom the police suspect of killing “an under-age girl.” While Bea investigates the apparently inoffensive Jeremy, she must also deal with sinister machinations at the agency in an unsuspenseful subplot that undermines the whodunit story line.

March 15, 2012
An old friend talks Bea Abbot (False Money, 2011, etc.) into helping a musician caught in a honey trap. Plagued by doubts about the direction her domestic agency is taking, Bea takes an afternoon off to attend a concert with CJ, her adopted son Oliver's mentor. With his usual skill, CJ guides her to a tete-a-tete with Jeremy Waite, a music teacher fired because of an illicit liaison with an underage girl. The more she listens to Jeremy's tale--how Josie knocked on his door looking for an address on the next street, how she returned day after day to pour out her lonely heart to him, how she maneuvered him into a compromising position, only to have a photographer snap their picture--the more certain she is that he's the victim of a badger game. But his wife has thrown him out, and when vandals trash his rental flat, kind-hearted Bea lets Jeremy stay with her in an upstairs apartment originally intended for Oliver and Bea's assistant Maggie to share. Jeremy is a mixed bag as a guest. He eats everything in sight, he can't find his shoes, but he creates celestial music on an electric keyboard. And Bea can use the distraction. Her agency is growing by leaps and bounds, but as the client list grows, so do the complaints. Her new manager, Ianthe, has fired all her old staff and changes the computer password daily, effectively locking Bea out of her own system. But when Maggie's purchase orders aren't filled and her estimates keep getting lost, Bea wonders if it's time to sell up and retire to the south, as her son Max repeatedly suggests. Heley's seventh Abbot Agency entry may be her most delicate and best balanced yet.

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March 15, 2012
Bea Abbot, who owns a struggling domestic agency in London, agrees to find a home worker for an eccentric musician named Jeremy, who has been accused of murdering a young girl. When Jeremy shows up at Bea's door, fleeing an attempt on his life, she agrees to help him, if only to put the mess behind her. The trail leads to a gang of high-society folks running a scam called the Badger Game. Bea must work hard to keep Jeremy alive, while he thinks only of writing a song for the dead girl. A nice mix of suspense and cozy ambience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)