Faith, Fiction, Friends: "Murder in Mind" by Faith Martin

Retired Detective Inspector Hillary Greene, now working on cold cases as a civilian, is getting a new boss. Her current boss, Stephen Krayle, is being promoted, and their romantic relationship is entering a new chapter, or perhaps coming to an end – he’s asked her to marry him.

She’s also getting a new cold case. Some years back, an elderly woman was found beaten to death in the living room of her home in a small village. The murderer was never found, and a strong motive was never identified. Some of the people originally interviewed have since died (of natural causes), and this case appears to be one that may not get solved.

Faith Martin

Hillary is also having to keep an increasingly close eye on a member of her team, Jake Barnes, the highly successful tech entrepreneur who decided he wanted to be a policeman. The Kidlington / Oxford police higher-ups were thrilled with a PR coup, but Hillary wondered what else might be going on. When she discovered that Barnes had been snooping around her computer, she had another member of the team, Jimmy Jessop, keep an eye on him. And, sure enough, Jake is definitely up to something that involves going after some local criminals. But why?

Murder in Mind is the 16^th Hillary Greene mystery by British author Faith Martin, and martin once again adroitly manages three narrative streams in one book – the main mystery, Greene’s romantic life, and a story involving one of the police team members. Greene proves to be as adept as solving cold cases as she was solving homicide cases when she was a full-time DI.

In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.