An inventive novel about grief, climate change, and academia.
An ethics professor leads her students through an exercise with real-world implications in Baden’s novel.
Professor Iris Tate teaches moral philosophy at a British university, where she hopes to apply her discipline to the crisis of climate change. She’s just received an intriguing request from the Crown Prosecution Service: a murder has occurred in a closed committee on climate, but prosecuting the murderer would give the powers that be an excuse to kill an important climate policy recently passed by the committee. Would Iris be willing to put the question of whether the state should prosecute to her students, since, after all, young people have the greatest stake in the outcome? In the past, Iris has used students as guinea pigs on behalf of corporate studies, but this is the first time she’s ever been asked to weigh in on a murder investigation (the students will have no idea the case is a real one). Iris, reeling from the recent death of her wife, is desperate to take on a project with meaning—plus, the school is pushing professors to be more entertaining in the classroom, and what’s more entertaining than a murder mystery? As Iris walks her students through a simulated version of the real case, she is forced to reckon with the losses and compromises in her life that have brought her to this position. It turns out ethical dilemmas abound at every stage of the process, and Iris might not be the disinterested arbiter she aspires to be. Iris narrates her struggles with a dry humor, as here when discussing one of her fictional suspects: “His medications may have combined with his cannabis smoking and prior issues to tip him over the edge. I asked whether we should hold him morally responsible for his actions, even if they include murder. It wasn’t my best class, but this is more of a legal question anyway.” Less a traditional mystery novel than a philosophy-driven campus tale, the book satisfies as an extended thought exercise with a relatable human center.
An inventive novel about grief, climate change, and academia.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781739088996
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Habitat Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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