A powerful, creepy mystery steeped in history, with a very effective climactic surprise.
An 1882 case exposes Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham, partners in the World’s End Bureau, to a diabolical serial killer.
Lily, happy that she’s gotten rid of an annoying tenant and replaced her with two scholarly spinsters who are thrilled to be under her roof, greets three nervous elderly people who arrive at the office: Alethea Fetterplace and her siblings, Frances and Thomas. They explain their ancient lineage, their home near the Tower of London, and their discovery of a body, its skull detached, buried in their rose bed. Though they’re obviously withholding details, they hint that the gold chain and expensive fabric with which the skeleton is adorned indicate that it might be someone of great import. Made uneasy by some noises and lights near their garden at night, they’re eager for advice about what they should do. Felix has a bad feeling, and with reason: When he visits the area, he’s noticed by a dangerous man. With help from journalist Marmaduke Smithers and his erudite friends, they learn that their clients think the body is that of Anne Boleyn, and they may be right. When Felix goes for a look at the skeleton, he’s attacked and left for dead. Only careful nursing by all the inhabitants of Lily’s home saves Felix’s life. In the meantime, Lily realizes that they’re dealing with a great evil. Research supports the suspicions of her friend, waterman Tamáz, that a man may have been killing women all over England and dumping their dismembered bodies in waterways. Now their attention is focused on the serial killer, who has Lily in his own sights.
A powerful, creepy mystery steeped in history, with a very effective climactic surprise.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781448313020
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Focus on people and places; leave the red herrings to someone else.
Perrin’s third Castle Knoll mystery moves to London, where Annie Adams investigates the murder of her mother’s protégé.
Acclaimed painter Laura Adams is known for her solitary ways. So Annie is perplexed, and a little piqued, to learn that her mother has taken art student Felicity Rowe under her wing, even allowing Fliss to share her Chelsea town house. Annie isn’t hard up for lodgings, since she inherited a fortune from her great-aunt Frances, but her concern over her mother’s new living arrangements brings her down from rural Dorset to assess the situation in person. That concern rises to the level of panic when Felicity turns up dead in a dumpster behind the house. Laura’s clearly hiding something, and to unravel the complex puzzle, Annie needs the help of her old friend, police Detective Rowan Crane. Felicity’s murder turns out to have roots in the decades-old death of socialite Vera Huntington, who partied with Frances in London’s jazz clubs back in the 1960s. Perrin handles the twin narratives deftly, giving careful attention to each and permitting their connection to develop richly. She allows the love interest in each story to follow their own peculiar trajectory. And she draws a vivid picture of London, both past and present. The solution to the puzzle, on the other hand, is easily foreseen and too long in coming. Perrin is at her considerable best when she concentrates on drawing sympathetic, believable characters facing tough emotional issues.
Focus on people and places; leave the red herrings to someone else.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217047505
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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