DEADLY DIAMONDS

An insurance investigator looks into a large number of diamond burglaries in Massachusetts and encounters danger in Norton’s mystery.

Cambridge resident Amy Lynch is the senior claims manager for the New England Casualty and Indemnity insurance company, and she has a situation on her hands. There’s been a spate of jewelry thefts all over the state, with the thieves focusing primarily on diamonds and high-end gemstones. Amy and her colleagues Peggy and Tiffany contact various agencies they have contracts with while investigating the uptick in burglaries, and they find that some of the insurance agents are cagey or downright rude. But the fact that an insurance agent was recently killed in an apparent mugging, coupled with Amy’s receiving a cryptic phone call from fellow insurance agent Tom Foye (“whatever you do, don’t call me back. That would be too dangerous….Sorry to sound so mysterious, but I don’t know what else to do”), increases the feeling that these thefts are more complicated than they initially appear. Norton’s latest installment in her Amy Lynch Investigation series features accessible prose and likable characters, and it benefits from the fact that mysteries set in the insurance industry are relatively rare. The story opens strongly, with a stealth murder from the perspective of the killer, and Norton flows easily from that point to set up the main plot. From there, however, the tale often stagnates; a significant part of the book consists of conversations between Amy and her boyfriend, her co-workers, or her company’s insurance agents, which move the story forward but lack excitement and often feel repetitive. Indeed, little of interest occurs until nearly halfway through the story, when Amy has a run-in with a creepy stranger while walking her dog.

A novel with appealing characters and a good setup but a general lack of action.