KATHERYN’S SECRET, by Linda Hall, Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, Ore., 2000, 305 pages.

“When Sharon was eight years old, Katie took the poker from beside the fireplace, raised it high above her head, then brought it down hard on the hearthstone, so hard that the gray slate cracked all the way from the front of the fireplace to the outer edge of the hearth. …

“Then she said rather wistfully, `Do you suppose this was the way the murder was accomplished? Something hard? Metallic? Like a fire poker?’ She winked at Sharon when she said this. That’s what Katie was like. Shocking. Outrageous. Totally inept at some things, but gloriously competent at others.”

Sharon Colebrook learned to tell stories from her Aunt Katheryn, called Katie by her rigorously religious family. When Sharon grew up and became a well-known writer of detective novels, she credited her aunt for her ability to weave suspenseful tales. Yet, the one secret Sharon has not unraveled is the murder buried deep in her family’s past — the one her aunt hinted at but never fully revealed.

Family secrets and the painful scars that can be inflicted in the name of God are the subjects of Linda Hall’s new novel “Katheryn’s Secret.” Best known for her books featuring Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Roger Sheppard, the Fredericton, New Brunswick, author is classified as a Christian writer because her characters attend church and make moral choices. There also is limited violence, and sex is only hinted at in Hall’s books.

Three years ago, Hall set aside her Mountie series to write more character-driven works. A New Jersey native, the writer has summered on the coast of Maine since childhood. Three of her novels, including “Katheryn’s Secret,” are set in small coastal communities. Most often, the solution of the mystery is secondary to the spiritual journeys of her characters, and Hall reverently describes the state’s beautiful, jagged coast.

The latest book is a slight departure from the two previous Maine novels, “Margaret’s Peace” and “Island of Refuge.” While the plot of this mystery also revolves around the uncovering of old family secrets, Hall’s description and criticism of organized religion, especially fundamentalist practices, is more overt and harsher than before. Characters in “Katheryn’s Secret” also confront the cruel and insensitive treatment of homosexuals by some religious organizations.

Hall’s alter ego Sharon Colebrook was raised in a strict Christian family, as were her father, Mack, and his sisters, Hilda, Katie and Mary. Life revolved around church. Prayer and Bible reading were daily rituals like combing hair and brushing teeth. Everything in the “Good Book” was literally God’s word and was to be followed to the letter.

“No dances, no movies, no television, no going to the Beatles movies even when everybody in the entire school, that’s all they talked about. No high school prom, no graduation party (well, except for the church one, where they bobbed for apples and played Twister). No listening to rock-and-roll music on the radio. … Having to bring in notes — incessantly bringing in notes — to school, excusing us from social dance and from sex education and from reading certain novels for English class” is how Sharon describes her childhood.

Sharon left all that behind and gave up on church, yet her mystery novels all have religious themes and titles like “Fallen from Grace,” “The Gates of Hell” and “A Wretch Like Me.” And the author is almost as critical of her own daughter’s behavior as Sharon’s father was of hers. Sharon just doesn’t evoke the name of God.

The strength of Hall’s story is the way she layers and weaves together the three generations caught up in the mystery. While the conclusion seems a bit forced and slightly contrived, the characters, with one exception, do not.

The people who inhabit “Katheryn’s Secret” are fascinating, especially Katie. Hall reveals them slowly and carefully, as if she were pulling the petals off a precious flower with a flawed but jeweled center.

Mack, Sharon’s father, is the one character in the book who does not ring true. Hall paints him as such a severe and unyielding man so incapable of expressing or accepting love that his change of heart about the son he cast out years before feels false. The switch seems too sudden and Mack’s blaming his sister Hilda for his actions is so out of character it is unbelievable.

“Katheryn’s Secret” is the weakest of Hall’s books set in Maine. While her dialogue and character development are excellent, her repeated use of the way old family secrets haunt and harm future generations as a plot device is wearing thin.

The issue of homosexuals’ place in religious communities and their treatment by some denominations is important given the current struggles in churches and the secular world. It deserves a deeper, more meaningful exploration than Hall has given it here.