Lena refuses to work for Clayton, Ned’s father, but agrees to work for Emma. What she will discover involves the market for human organs and bioengineering.

This brief plot synopsis is unusually short for a TMR review because the book’s story line often takes secondary importance to the character studies. In this third Lena Padgett mystery, Lena and her significant other Joel Mendez are still working out their relationship. Dr. Tundridge, his wife Syd, and a clinic employee Amaryllis Burton, as well as Marcus Franklin, a pathologist, all have their fifteen minutes of fame. The true heroine of When Secrets Die, however, is not Lena Padgett but Emma Marsden.

Emma carries emotional scars from her mother’s death when she was still in her teens, her first marriage ended quickly and badly, she’s deeply grieving over Ned’s death, and she’s suffering from a mysterious illness herself. It all adds up to a woman who’s nearly overwhelmed by loss and responsibility. She so fully dominates the narrative that it’s easy to forget there’s a whodunit and a mystery still to be solved.

The shifting focus from one character to another contributes to the book’s somewhat uneven pacing. The sections focusing on Lena are in first person, the others in third. Keeping the various characters’ threads separate can occasionally be challenging. Limiting the focus to only two characters – Lena and Emma – might have made for a smoother, more gripping story line.

The book raises interesting questions about medical research’s legal and ethical limits. Readers may be surprised at some of the facts underlying the plot including who has the right to patent a patient’s tissue.

It’s not necessary to have read the previous Lena Padgett books before reading When Secrets Die. It stands well on its own although knowing something about Lena’s and Joel’s history is helpful. Armchair detectives who enjoy solving a whodunit along with the fictional detective may find this mystery worth checking out.

--Lesley Lawrence