The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Adams’s moody eighth Henry Johnstone mystery (after 2021’s Bright Young Things) opens in 1930 as career criminal Brady Brewer is hanged for the murder of Sarah Downham. Brewer’s guilt seems beyond question, yet he dies loudly protesting his innocence. Barely a month later, a second young woman is murdered a mile from where Sarah was found. A copycat killing? Or was Brewer actually innocent of the first crime? Det. Chief Insp. Henry Johnstone and Sgt. Mickey Hitchens head to Leicestershire to assist Insp. James Walker, who arrested Brewer for Sarah’s murder and now leads the investigation into the latest death. After reviewing the evidence, the detectives find that as wicked as Brewer was, he may have been hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. The mystery is properly twisty and the English countryside beautifully atmospheric, but the story’s greatest strength is the relationships between the detectives. Johnstone is spiky and irritable, his longtime partner, Hitchens, is his caring conscience. Walker is miffed by Scotland Yard’s interference, yet worried that his antipathy for Brewer caused a rush to judgement. Lovers of tweedy English murder mysteries will find much to like. (Aug.)