Hidden Agenda, by Christy Barritt, was released under Harlequin's Love Inspired Suspense line in March 2015. I picked up this title because I liked Ms. Barritt's novel, Dubiosity, which I reviewed earlier in January of this year.
The protagonists in Hidden Agenda are Bailey Williams, a home care nurse, and Ed Carter, a CIA agent. They are brought together by the death of Ed's father, when Ed returns to Smuggler's Cove, the island which his father retired to after a lifelong career with the State Department. Bailey is less than impressed with the son who did not make it home in time for his own father's funeral. She isn't even certain of Ed's identity, because Mr. Carter, Ed's father, did not keep any photos of Ed in his home. She had been told that Ed is a lawyer, but he doesn't seem to behave or act like one. Ed, who is convinced that his father's death was actually a murder, is suspicious of Bailey, wondering if she played any part in Mr. Carter's death. One of Mr. Carter's friends had left Ed a cryptic message, but had died under mysterious circumstances, just as his father had.
As the novel progresses, the attraction between Bailey and Ed grows, but several factors prevent them from trusting each other. Ed needs to search through his father's belongings to find out if his dad was hiding classified information on his estate, and wonders why Bailey is remaining at Smuggler's Cove even though her duties towards his family are finished. Bailey has been threatened several times by an unknown assailant who also promises to hurt and kill her relatives if she does not help him to recover secret information that Mr. Carter has hidden away on his estate. She is also warned not to tell Ed about the threats, otherwise her family will be harmed. Ed, who has been burned before by an ex-girlfriend who turned out to be a spy, senses that Bailey is holding back information from him and continues to wonder if she is working for the people that were responsible for getting his father killed, even though he gets to know her character better. His mistrust doesn't encourage Bailey to ask him for help against the threats that she is facing in spite of her developing feelings for him. Will Ed and Bailey be able to trust and help each other? Will they find out who killed Mr. Carter, and will they find what he hid on his property?
I found this novel to be fairly suspenseful and fast paced. There are secrets, danger, intrigue, espionage, death threats, and attempts against people's lives, unsuccessful, and successful. I would also say that there seems to be no character that is wasted; each seems to play a fairly significant role in the plot, however minor it may be. I thought that this made the novel tightly written and I appreciated the development of the plot and the economic use of the characters that were introduced in the story. I did not guess the identities of the antagonists; I don't know if this was just laziness or fuzziness in my thinking, but when they were revealed, I had a moment of, "Yeah,...of course...that makes sense...," for one of them, and for the other, I appreciated the author's use of another character that had been fleetingly introduced earlier in the story and of whom I had not expected to hear about again.
I enjoyed reading Hidden Agenda, and will probably read more of Ms. Barritt's work in the future.
