TREAD LIGHTLY

A former hostage negotiator helps authorities in Northern California solve a local murder in Kemp’s mystery.

Eight years ago, Tierney Gillespie’s partner in the Dublin Crisis Intervention Squad, Norah Boyce, was gunned down by a vengeful sniper at a gala event. Now, Tierney lives with her husband and young son in a “hoity-toity” Silicon Valley enclave, but the shooting still torments her. Unexpectedly, she gets another chance to be a hero when police discover the body of a young woman beaten to death at a local community pool. Tierney frequents the pool as a form of therapy, and she can’t resist helping peevish Det. Sgt. Howard Sutton solve the case—whether he wants her to or not. Along the way, Tierney juggles a host of other challenges, including raising her bullied kindergartner son, supporting a workaholic husband whose accounting firm represents high-tech firms in a wide-ranging financial scandal, and struggling to ingratiate herself with new friends, largely due to her baking prowess. There’s a lot going on in Kemp’s novel, which explains the expansive cast, but readers may find it arduous at times to remember who’s who. Nevertheless, it all leads to a taut hostage situation in which Tierney, a pregnant Norah lookalike, and the queen bee of kindergarten moms are locked in a bathroom by gun-toting drug dealers—who, disappointingly, are rather late additions to the cast. However, Tierney is an appealingly resolute hero with a big heart and an unwavering moral compass—and it’s hard to resist a novel with a line like “I used to be a hostage negotiator in Ireland for a few years before getting into baking.”

An absorbing whodunit and psychological drama with a strong protagonist.