False Impression: An Abbot Agency Mystery

In Heley’s satisfying ninth Abbot Agency mystery (after 2013’s False Diamond), Bea Abbot, a practicing Christian who runs a “successful domestic agency from her house in an upmarket London suburb,” faces a host of problems. First, successful businessman Leon Holland, a good friend who often escorts her to social functions, fears for his life. A van nearly ran him down in the road recently. Bea agrees to help him go into temporary hiding at a hotel. Meanwhile, the agency’s computer system has a virus, and Bea’s lodger, Leon’s niece, takes in a man who needs a place to stay, Orlando. Later, Bea learns that text messages lured Leon and Orland to a car park. The two found the bodies of a man and a woman in their respective cars, and now the police have a murder case to solve. Heley evokes the upper-middle-class world to which the Abbot Agency caters with subtlety and restraint. The frenetic pace of the early chapters gradually slows to a surprising conclusion. (Mar.)