BLOOD TIES

A busman’s holiday in chilly Somerset brings blind ex-DI Naomi Blake and her husband, DI Alec Friedman (Legacy of Lies, 2007, etc.), up against another murderer.

There’s so little to do in the little hamlet outside Glastonbury that it’s no wonder the B&B that welcomes Naomi and Alec is faltering. And the village loses one of its chief attractions when local historian Eddy Thame tumbles down a flight of stairs to his death. But Sgt. Andrew Dean is quick to spot the telltale signs of murder, though he needs help finding a motive and a guilty party. Was the dotty old man killed because he’d found a treasure hidden by the fleeing Catherine Kirkwood, whose father had unwisely backed the Duke of Monmouth’s 1685 bid for the English throne, and whose subsequent adventures Eddy had chronicled in Roads to Ruin? Or does the motive lie in a more recent historical episode, the death of four teenagers, including Eddy’s beloved daughter Karen, in a one-car crash? By the time the question is answered, Alec, who’s told Naomi that he’s thinking of leaving the force, has the decision of whether to continue taken out of his hands.

Adams (The Power of One, 2009, etc.) adds a guilty suicide, a ne’er-do-well brother, a false claimant and a hostage-taking into the mix, but somehow it never seems very suspenseful, or very mysterious. Maybe that B&B ought to shutter its doors after all.