The Redeemed: A Jenny Cooper Mystery

At the start of British author Hall's able second mystery thriller to appear in the U.S. (after The Disappeared), coroner Jenny Cooper looks into the apparent suicide of psychiatric nurse Alan Jacobs, found in a churchyard in her Severn Vale district. Later, a Jesuit priest, Fr. Lucas Starr, asks her to investigate the murder of adult film actress Eva Donaldson. Though Paul Craven confessed to the killing and was convicted, Starr believes Craven, who "was not in his right mind," is innocent. Cooper learns that Donaldson joined the Mission Church of God after leaving the porn industry and supported Decency, "a pressure group advocating a ban on internet pornography." Still working through her own childhood trauma and rocky divorce, Cooper is under pressure from all sides to wrap up her inquiries, even when she discovers links between Donaldson and Jacobs's deaths. Hall's damaged heroine walks a fine line between empathy and aloofness, while a chilling blend of religion and corruption propels the whodunit plot. (May)