Confession (Jenny Cain mysteries #9) by Nancy Pickard

A marked improvement in the series.

This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband, Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropic organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick.

While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion.

This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients for a book discussion group. I was pleasantly surprised.

The only quibble I have with the book is a section about 2/3 of the way through it in which a minister who has been a recurring character throughout the series makes some commentary on sin and forgiveness and Christianity. It is evident that the author truly does not grasp these concepts as they are taught in Christianity so I wish she'd have had the comments made by a different character, rather than a minister. However, this is more than compensated for by the rather surprising twist of an ending - I could not put down the book for the last 20 pages, despite the fact that it nearly made me late for work.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Confession by Nancy Pickard.

Reviewed on June 29, 2004.