A bustling, elegant whodunit fueled by suppressed lust and enigmatic characters.
A daring heroine unravels another tangled murder mystery with lurid trappings.
Oxford 1923: Headstrong American Ruby Vaughn finds respite from the stresses of her life via daily fencing forays at the Artemis Club with alluring Leona Abernathy. Their blossoming relationship seems headed for an affair. Armstrong packs a great deal of exposition into the opening chapter of Ruby’s third case, much of it referencing previous mysteries while foreshadowing upcoming events. These include Ruby’s questionable relationship with handsome solicitor Hari Anand. At the home of former professor Emmanuel Laurent, Ruby learns about the feud between Oxford Egyptologist Frederick Reaver and the scoundrel Julius Harker, who runs a “curiosity museum.” The mystery develops slowly, driven by ornate language and a swirl of mysterious characters. Perhaps most mysterious is Ruby’s octogenarian boss, Mr. Owen, an antiquarian book dealer and perhaps a puppet master, who’s introduced her to the world of the occult. A reception at Harker’s museum ends with the discovery of Harker’s corpse. Although the police arrest Harker’s mild-mannered bookkeeper, Mr. Mueller, Ruby is unsettled by Leona’s suspicious behavior. So of course righteous Ruby must probe. As if on cue, folk healer and former inamoratos-cum–sleuthing sidekick Ruan Kivell reappears to assist her. Ruby’s attraction for Ruan simmers beneath their banter, which is charged with sexual tension and studded with barbs. A handful of other patrician suspects with colorful backstories are folded in, and Hari reappears with the startling news that Ruby’s mother and sister, who reportedly perished on the Lusitania, may be alive.
A bustling, elegant whodunit fueled by suppressed lust and enigmatic characters.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250374653
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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