Firewall: An Emma Streat Mystery

In West’s engrossing third Emma Streat mystery (after 2009’s Overkill), widowed former opera singer Emma is in snowy Boston looking forward to a Caribbean vacation with an ex-lover, Lord Andrew Rodale, an undercover crisis solver for the British Secret Intelligence Service, when she gets a call from her godmother, Caroline Vog. Caroline, who’s in her 80s and has no other family, asks Emma, the only person she can trust to handle a sensitive matter, to come to New York City to help put a stop to a blackmailer threatening to expose a secret in Caroline’s past. Emma agrees to come to the rescue. Caroline suspects her first husband, Pierre Hallam, is the culprit, but further exploration reveals him to be just a small player in a conspiracy to possess a cutting-edge computer program capable of penetrating even sophisticated security measures and firewalls. Coincidentally, Lord Andrew has Pierre under surveillance, and he and his team agree to join forces with Emma. The suspense mounts as Emma is thrust into the world of cybercrime and dangerous intrigue. Only the somewhat saccharine ending disappoints. Readers will hope it won’t be another 10 years before the next installment. (Nov.)