False Report: An Abbot Agency Mystery

Heley’s sixth Abbot Agency mystery, a slight improvement over 2011’s middling False Money, finds Bea Abbot at a turning point in her life. The domestic agency bearing her name is booming, but she can’t help wondering whether giving up control of its daily activities was a mistake, both in business and personal terms. Her M.P. son’s mentor, CJ, offers her distraction in the form of a murder case. CJ, “a mandarin used by the police as an expert in matters too complicated... for the ordinary man or woman to understand,” fears that he may have provided a false alibi for an acquaintance, Jeremy Waite, whom the police suspect of killing “an under-age girl.” While Bea investigates the apparently inoffensive Jeremy, she must also deal with sinister machinations at the agency in an unsuspenseful subplot that undermines the whodunit story line. (Mar.)