SECRET SINS
by Kate Charles
Curate Callie Anderson finds her faith tested after being dumped by her boyfriend.
The restaurateur parents of policeman Marco Lombardi (Evil Intent, 2005, etc.) just want him to marry a nice Italian girl instead of someone like Callie. Marco’s shamus pal Neville Stewart is meanwhile stubbornly ignoring his own relationship problems when he’s handed the case of a jogger apparently killed for his iPod. When the officer assigned to help the very pregnant widow discovers another motive for the murder, the case is solved. But Stewart’s patience is tested by a child’s disappearance. Callie has befriended Morag Hamilton, a widow from Scotland whose controlling son and trophy wife Jilly allow limited access to her granddaughter Alex, 12, whose biological mother has been in a home in Scotland since her mental breakdown. When bright, resourceful Alex discovers Jilly has withheld all her mother’s letters, she eludes her pedophilic online boyfriend and makes her way to Scotland. Irascible Stewart asks tactful Marco to work with her demanding, well-connected father. Driving to Scotland, Morag and Callie find Marco minding Alex’s father and the local police at the nursing home with a defiant Alex. Negotiations begin to let Alex reside with Morag and her soon-to-be-released mother in Scotland.
A police procedural with a weak mystery, romantic overtones and sympathetic characters who draw you in and set you up for future revelations.