A well-established setting enriches this unhurried but worthwhile whodunit.
In Marriott’s mystery sequel, a retired homicide detective reluctantly investigates a murder in Greece.
Vathy, on the Greek island of Ithaca, has been Virgil Colvin’s home for two years. He left the Chicago Police Department after his wife died and has since fallen in love with Eurydice Pantakalas, to whom he’s now engaged. However, Vathy police chief Costas Pantakalas, Virgil’s friend and Eurydice’s cousin, gets married first, and the newlyweds’ honeymoon includes meeting up with Virgil and Eurydice in the Greek peninsula town of Monemvasia. They dine at a local restaurant with a large group arranged by a Greek billionaire, and the meal turns into a politically charged debate involving climate activists and a journalist. The next day, one of the dinner guests, Theodoric Künz, the chair of Byzantine history at Harvard University, is found dead, his body badly burned. Just because Virgil investigated a murder last year on Ithaca—as chronicled in the previous series entry, The School of Homer (2023)—doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with this latest one. However, Costas and Eurydice’s coaxing, and his own growing interest, causes him to look closer at the case, with the aim of unmasking a killer. Initially, Marriott’s sophomore series installment moves at a slow, deliberate pace, not unlike the quieter island life that Virgil seems to enjoy. The extended dinner scene deftly introduces characters who go on to become suspects or potential future victims, and the killer’s motive isn’t immediately clear. It’s entertaining to watch Virgil in detective mode, sleuthing with Costas, who’s technically still on his honeymoon, and Monemvasia chief inspector Spyros Liourdis. Due to the fact there’s not much evidence, aside from one key element of the crime scene, the three investigators lead a string of interrogations, and piece together, or pull apart, developing theories. Greece, meanwhile, isn’t merely a backdrop—its rich history and culture, and its memorable sites, continually fuel the narrative. The final act culminates in a satisfying revelation, followed by a delightful tease for the third installment.
A well-established setting enriches this unhurried but worthwhile whodunit.Pub Date: June 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781836710417
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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