An engaging supernatural whodunit with a compelling lead and a magical setting.
In Downer’s mystery, a no-nonsense private investigator must navigate a hidden world of magic to find a killer.
Former New York City police detective Sloane West is still grieving the death of her mother, Jane, who died in a violent car accident before the story opens. Now a private detective living on her own with a strangely humanlike cat named Bear, Sloane receives a surprise visit from Harold Huxham, a Canadian lawyer bearing news that she is about to inherit a large estate from grandparents she never knew existed. But just as Huxham is about to show her the papers, a gunman bursts into Sloane’s apartment, shoots Huxham in the head, and fails to kill Sloane—only because she kills him first. These bizarre events send Sloane on a voyage of investigation and discovery, taking her to the tiny community of Denwick on Vancouver Island. There, she finds a small number of tightly connected families who own the land in common and, it transpires, maintain a wiccan coven with abundant magical powers. She is told by her mysterious cousin, Dorathea, that Jane disappeared from their community just before Sloane was born, and that the coven had searched for her in vain. “You and your mum were both wrapped in spells strong enough to keep us from finding you. We are unaware of their source or how she accomplished them.” Shocked, Sloane soon realizes that dark magic was behind her mother’s and grandparents’ deaths. Thrust into a strange world of demons and talking cats, Sloane must plumb the secrets of the Denwick coven to expose the guilty party. This novel is well written and fast-paced, and the methodical process by which Sloan uncovers the secrets of the insular wiccan community will hold the reader’s attention throughout. Sloane West is a sharp, no-nonsense character whose skepticism about the supernatural elements of the story adds an element of realism to a narrative that is otherwise replete with otherworldly elements.
An engaging supernatural whodunit with a compelling lead and a magical setting.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781642474893
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Bella Books
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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