A Murderous Mind

October 6, 2014
At the start of Adams’s gripping eighth Naomi Blake mystery (after Gregory’s Game), set in Ferrymouth, England, 14-year-old Sarah Griffin is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of her mother and stepfather arguing downstairs with someone who sounds like her natural father. When she hears gunfire, she knows her mother and stepfather are dead, and flees the house with her 15-
month-old half-brother in her arms. The police find only one clue at the crime scene: the business card of retired police detective Naomi Blake. The double murder appears to be linked to the last big case Naomi handled before the accident that blinded her. Aided by her retired inspector spouse, Alec Friedman, Naomi sets out to locate a relative to care for Sarah and track down the killer. As the action builds to a satisfying ending, Naomi faces the terrifying prospect of confronting the last man she put in prison.

November 1, 2014
In the tenth Naomi Blake mystery, the blind British ex-cop teams up with her husband, Alec, a retired detective inspector, to find out why a man who was killed in an apparent home invasion had hidden in his home one of Blake's old business cards. Is there a connection to one of her police cases? Naomi and Alec make a good pairing. Naomi is the nominal series lead, but Alec is just as strong a character, with just as strong a personal story arc as Naomi's. This series entry is particularly interesting, as it delves deeply into Naomi's past. Fans will savor all the juicy backstory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016
The tenth Naomi Blake mystery finds Naomi and her husband, Alec, adjusting to a dramatic new phase in their lives. She is now blind due to an accident, and Alec has retired; though no longer police officers, they are not finished with investigations. When a young student at a nearby university is brutally murdered, the police discover links to a series of cold cases. DI Tess Fuller and her partner, DS Vin Dattani, discover that the investigating officer on one of the old cases, Joe Jackson, thought he knew the identity of the perpetrator. Jackson, now dead and discredited, cannot help, but Naomi, his protegee, may have useful information. Along with Naomi and Alec, who play background roles in the intricate story, readers hear from the primary investigators, the students affected by the death of their friend, and some mysterious friends of the retired sleuths. This is a fine British procedural that will engage readers immediately and hold their attention until justice is done.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 18, 2016
Early in Adams’s absorbing 11th mystery featuring former policewoman Naomi Blake (after 2014’s Paying the Ferryman), 18-year-old Leanne Bolter, a first-year student at a small Midlands university, is found eviscerated in her bedroom one morning. On viewing the mutilated body, Det. Insp. Tess Fuller can’t help thinking of Jack the Ripper. And yet Leanne’s flat mates, who were sleeping nearby, heard nothing the night before. The crime bears similarities to an unsolved murder that was investigated 15 years earlier by Det. Insp. Joe Jackson, who has since retired in disgrace. Tess consults Naomi, who once served under Jackson and might have insights into how he might have mishandled the earlier case. Tess soon must contend with a team from Internal Affairs reviewing her every step as she tries to suss out patterns and links in other unsolved homicides from around the time of the earlier murder. Fans of contemporary British police procedurals should be well satisfied.

January 1, 2016
A band of amateurs competes with numerous police officers to solve a grisly crime. DI Tess Fuller and her sergeant, Vin Dattani, are shocked by the scene they find at Penfold House, a student accommodation on Curzon Street in London. Leanne Bolter lies in her bedroom, slit from throat to pelvis and eviscerated, and none of her flatmates seems to have heard a thing. While Fuller, assisted by DCI Field, former DI Trinder, DS Cooper, and DS Briggs, searches for clues, Nathan Crow, protege of Secret Service agent Gustav Clay, inveigles his friend Gregory into a little sleuthing. Both Tess and Gregory have strong ties to Naomi, formerly Blake (Secrets, 2013, etc.) but now wife of Alec Friedman. Naomi's bored, partly because she was forced to retire from police work after losing her vision, partly because Alec is distracted by continuing education classes he's taking following a near-fatal car accident. So she becomes a sounding board for Tess and, to a lesser extent, for Gregory until the investigation threatens to disinter the Joe Jackson case. DI Jackson was Naomi's mentor until he retired in disgrace, in part for endangering Alec once before when an undercover case went bad. Jackson also investigated the death of Rebecca Arnold, whose murder bears striking similarities to Leanne's. But the more Tess tries to follow Jackson's footsteps, the more friction she sparks between Naomi and Alec, until evidence surfaces that Leanne and Rebecca may not have been the killer's only victims. Combining police procedural with elements of psychological suspense and spy thrillers produces a murky mess likely to please aficionados of none of the above.

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