A fun, frightening mystery with strong horror elements.
Two agents for a shadowy organization find themselves in a remote village in this suspense novel.
Ben is an agent of the Mycelia Sterilia Society, an organization so secretive even he rarely understands the purpose of his work. On his current mission, he’s been partnered with a more experienced operative known by a colorful assortment of pseudonyms—though Ben chooses to just call him Grim. They have been tasked with transporting a mysterious package the size and shape of a cooler to the failing lakeside town of Eidercrest—but Ben’s real mission is to keep an eye on Grim and report back any unusual behavior. The package is to be delivered to Radney Atwood, a “specialist” who lives in a lonely cabin on the lake. Ben and Grim make their delivery, but when it becomes clear that Atwood has been in contact with other parties, the organization orders the two operatives to remain in town and keep an eye on him. Eidercrest offers plenty of secrets to keep Ben’s mind busy, from the strange religious commune that has recently taken up residence in some of the abandoned properties to the supposed monster that Grim believes to be the topic of Atwood’s research. It all turns out to be much more complicated—and dangerous—than Ben bargained for, particularly when he and Grim run afoul of Thane, the commune’s leader, who has taken an interest in Atwood’s work. As friction between the two agents festers, Ben decides to take some initiative and infiltrate the commune on his own, which works well—until it doesn’t. He must keep his wits about him if he’s to solve the riddles of Grim, Atwood, Thane, and the very organization that employs him—or simply to survive the mission at all.
In this sequel, Kherbash’s prose is sparse and spooky, slowly bringing the tension to a boil: “Things grew quiet, and all Ben could hear” as he raised “his head was water gently lapping the wooden raft. Even the crowd lining the shore could not be heard. In the eerie stillness, and in his temporary blind state, the odor of slimy water was all he could perceive.” The author withholds information in a way that maximizes the suspense, leaving readers to piece together just what sort of world this is and who within it can be trusted. The characters are perhaps a bit more transparent than they should be—rarely does anyone do anything that is truly surprising. Kherbash offers readers chapters from Grim’s point of view, which has the unfortunate effect of demystifying the man. That said, Ben’s attempts to unpack all that surrounds him are a suitable engine for the plot, and the evocative setting and slightly Lovecraft-ian atmosphere add to the experience. The result is a highly compelling mix of horror and mystery that will keep the audience engaged even if the ultimate reveals are not quite as big (or as satisfying) as those that the author cultivates in readers’ imaginations.
A fun, frightening mystery with strong horror elements.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7338854-5-4
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
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
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