False Step

January 26, 2009
In Heley’s charming third mystery to feature Bea Abbot (after 2008’s False Picture
), the genteel London detective must deal with office renovations and investigate a mysterious death. A cleaning woman finds the body of her mild-mannered employer, Matthew Kent, in a red dress with a suicide note on his nightstand. When Kent’s daughter asks Bea to do an inventory of her father’s Kensington house, Bea uncovers evidence that suggests Kent was murdered. Later, to add to Bea’s problems, she receives a phone call from her son, a member of Parliament, who has had a disagreement with his wife and wants to live and work in her home. Leaving the running of her business in the hands of her capable staff, who include two likable teenage assistants, Bea sets out to discover the truth. Careful sleuthing leads to a surprising finale.

August 20, 2007
At the start of this ingenious series debut from British veteran Heley (Murder at the Altar
), Bea Abbot, recently widowed in New Zealand, has returned to London hoping for an empty house in which to grieve and put her life back together. Instead, she finds that her son, Max, recently elected to the House of Commons, has deserted the family investigation business, Abbot Agency, now destined for closure. To make matters worse, Max has hired Maggie, a young woman with pink hair, who has befriended a teenage boy, Oliver, and both are living in Bea's house. When caterer Coral Pyne, Bea's old friend, arrives saying she's been stiffed by a client and wants Bea's help recovering the money, Bea wants to tell them all to leave her alone. Nonetheless, feeling obliged to help Coral, she begins to investigate her claims and unknowingly finds herself one step behind a murderer. The cast of outrageous characters compliments a complex mystery.

January 15, 2009
Something doesn 't sit right with Bea Abbott (False Charity, 2007, etc.) when her employee finds a client dead, an apparent suicide.

Maybe it was the dress, with its red satin bodice and frilled petticoat, spread lovingly over the corpse. Maybe it was the red spangled shoes. Whatever it was, it led Florrie Green to call her boss, Bea Abbott, as soon as she found Matthew Kent dead in bed in the house that the Abbott Agency had sent the Green Girls Cleaning Company to tidy. Not that the clothes weren 't Matthew 's; all his publicity stills showed the female impersonator meticulously costumed in ultra-feminine style. But why would the jovial performer kill himself? His two ex-wives, schoolteacher Gail and singer Goldie, don 't seem to care apart from their intent to loot Matthew 's two-story Victorian of knickknacks. And his stepdaughter Damaris Frasier has her eye on the lovely home itself. So all three are gobsmacked to learn that Matthew left his house to Lily, the daughter of his accompanist Bert Cunningham. Determined to fight, Damaris hires the Abbott Agency to inventory the property. The more she handles his belongings, the more unconvinced Bea is that Matthew 's death was a suicide. Despite the twin distractions of builders in her office and an errant son on her doorstep, kicked out of his marital home by a jealous wife, Bea discovers a conspiracy that almost defies description.

Clever clueing and a shocking solution place what would otherwise have been a routine cozy above the competition.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
In her third case (after "False Charity" and "False Picture"), Bea Abbot is called to a house where the owner is lying dead, an apparent suicide. But then she finds that there are many greedy relatives to sort out and a few small things that add up to murder. To further complicate Bea's life, her Member of Parliament son, in the throes of marital problems, moves home. Heley, one of the most engaging British mystery writers today, strings Bea along until she springs some surprises on unsuspecting readers. Think Agatha Christie meets Mary Roberts Rinehart in modern London. For most collections.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2009
Heleys latest Abbott Agency mystery is a modern-day British cozy with a twist. Bea Abbott is having a crisisher house is being remodeled; her son, Max, is having marriage troubles and has moved back home; and, on top of it all, she receives a panicked call from one of her cleaning-agency employees, who has found a mans body in the bedroom of the house shes cleaning. When Bea arrives, she finds the man laid out on his bed, his feet in red high heels and his body draped in a red dress, a suicide note nearby. But things dont add up, and what starts out as an open and shut suicide quickly turns into a murder investigation. As usual when Bea is involved, nothing is straightforward, and the plot takes so many bizarre twists and turns that even the most seasoned reader will be surprised at the ending. Although the story gets off to a slow start, readers who persist will be well rewarded with this wacky, fast-paced, and even rather charming mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)