“The Bishop’s Wife” begins with the first of several crises that will test Linda’s faith and make her suspect that Draper harbors more than its share of wife abusers. Along comes Jared Helm, who looks like trouble, and his adorable 5-year-old daughter, Kelly, who visit the bishop at home. “I’m hungry,” Kelly says. Her father tells her that she doesn’t need to eat because she’s already had breakfast. And up go Linda’s hackles as Jared tells her a highly implausible story about his wife’s mysterious disappearance.

Image Mette Ivie Harrison Credit... Kari Rhodes

Could Jared be a ruthless killer? He’s hardly the only suspect in town. During the course of the book, as Kurt leaves notes on the refrigerator giving Linda the names of families she ought to bake for and visit, she also encounters Anna and Tobias Tortensen, who are going through something terribly painful. At first they try to hide it, but they can’t do that for long; Tobias, it turns out, is near death. So Linda sets out to be as helpful as she can. While tidying up their backyard, she finds strange, incriminating evidence that something terrible might have happened there long ago.

Ms. Harrison gives Linda the kind of cautious gentility that makes her stop and wonder if she isn’t being overly suspicious — even when Anna tells her that Tobias has paid for them to have side-by-side graves and always keeps a nice new hammer on his night stand. Is Linda being silly to be alarmed, as her husband likes to make her believe? Or is she a born detective who’s really on a roll throughout this novel? Let’s just say that “The Bishop’s Wife” is billed as “a Linda Wallheim novel,” which suggests that her instincts will continue to yield pay dirt.

Although it’s apt to offend most Mormon men (who might not be inclined to read a book about a housewifely mother of five in the first place), “The Bishop’s Wife” has good reason to draw a large readership. It places heavy emphasis on domestic abuse and on the question of how dangerous fire-breathing extremists really are. The man who inveighs against women as whores and sinners may or may not be anything worse than a crank. The man who speaks sanctimoniously of them may be much worse.

And the women who live among them have every reason to hide whatever goes on behind closed doors. They aren’t likely to find shoulders to lean on within their community. That’s why Ms. Harrison’s Linda is such a welcome character: In her role as Sister Wallheim, she encourages women to speak freely, at least to her, and to escape the shame that has burdened some of them since childhood. Linda is no mover or shaker, and she accepts many Mormon beliefs and customs in her heart. But she has healthy doubts about, say, waiting until the next life to be able to raise the stillborn daughter she lost in this one. Linda has grown sons, but the loss of that baby girl haunts her throughout this story.