NIGHT VISION

Former detective Naomi Blake (Blood Ties, 2011, etc.) is terrified by telephone calls from a former friend who died in a fiery crash.

DI Alec Friedman can’t figure out why he and DCI Nick Travers have been sent out of town to help investigate the murder of Neil Robinson shortly before his release from a minimum-security facility in the South. Their arrest of Robinson some years back for his role in a Ponzi scheme hardly qualifies them as experts. And the local cops—taciturn DI Eddison, chatty DS Munroe and hotshot DI Parks—seem on top of the case. Alec is particularly reluctant to leave his wife Naomi on her own, even though the blind ex-cop has her guide dog Napoleon, 15-year-old prodigy Patrick and his father Harry to keep her company. When Travers is slashed to ribbons in his motel room, Alec’s misgivings deepen. Even if his DI survives, Travers’ contributions to the case are now reduced to musings about his affair with Michelle Sanders, currently governor of the prison where Robinson died, along with mutterings about a mysterious “Gregory,” who’s apparently still alive. But when Naomi receives a series of phone calls from her old friend Jamie Dale, a reporter who burned to death in a car fire, Alec is scared out of his wits. Should he chuck the case and go home to Naomi? Or will his investigation unearth a link between Robinson, Dale and this shadowy Gregory that will ensure his wife’s safety in the long run?

More thriller than mystery, Naomi’s eighth leaves way too many loose ends to satisfy.