COTSWOLD MURDERS

A second adventure for British Secret Service agent Lady Jane Hildreth, who's beautiful, smart, and rich besides, thanks to a generous ex-husband, now deceased (Cotswold Manners). Jane, on a train to London from her country cottage, is confided in by a depressed young Irish woman named Anne, who claims to have just been jilted by her boyfriend--an IRA terrorist who's an inmate at Top Marsden prison near the village of Little Bisset. She also claims to have killed someone, but gives no details and disappears before the train completes its journey, reappearing as a murder victim some days later. Jane takes a personal interest in the case and, with her superior's blessing, starts to investigate in Little Bisset, where Anne had sometimes stayed overnight with the vicar while visiting Mike O'Flynn at the prison. She Finds the vicar and his tiny congregation evasive about Anne, but discovers that they all have some past or present connection to Hong Kong. Flying there to explore matters further--and incidentally rekindling an old romance--Anne uncovers, amidst the general disquiet, evidence of an unlikely alliance between the IRA and the Chinese Mafia. Back home there's another murder before our heroine winds it all up, thwarting a deadly conspiracy. Slight, polite, and only mildly engrossing--but a mighty improvement over the first of this series.