A quiet but engrossing fish-out-of-water story / crime thriller with vibrant details and memorable characters.
Provincetown’s new police chief must whip the local force into shape while tackling a fatal hit-and-run case in Mirabile’s vivid series opener.
Silas Lopez has just settled into his new role as chief of police in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when a fatal late-night hit-and-run accident lands him in the middle of a big case during one of the busiest times of the year. (“This wasn’t just a traffic crash. He could feel it. Something was off.”) For Silas, the event is a chance to prove himself as a detective and a leader, a trial by fire in which Silas must simultaneously win the trust of both his new police force and the community while training a mostly inexperienced squad in real police work. Clues are hard to come by in this quiet small town, but those he finds hint at a darker crime that could make or break Silas’ career. Silas remains undeterred and uses a combination of unconventional police methods and the grit he’s developed as a rancher in the American Southwest to crack the case, bring his force together, and maybe find love in the process. Silas is a looming physical presence with a folksy charm that will endear him to readers. While many detectives in crime thrillers are hardboiled and jaded, Silas projects a quiet determination; his emphasis on fairness and providing service to the whole community stands in welcome contrast to standard action-packed thriller fare in which criminals are simply evil and must be punished. Moments of introspection are expertly sprinkled throughout, giving the socially awkward protagonist opportunities to outline his reasoning and provide commentary on the action. Mirabile’s prose is clean and clear and lovingly paints an eclectic, vibrant community in a way that suggests the expertise of a Provincetown local. Such fine detail, however, can become laborious when whole chapters depict workaday scenarios that serve as interludes during the main action. Still, this series opener is a worthwhile read and will make a fine addition to any mystery-thriller collection.
A quiet but engrossing fish-out-of-water story / crime thriller with vibrant details and memorable characters.Pub Date: April 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798899891151
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Slack Tide Press
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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