An inviting look at an ancient king and the lives of those around him.
Niko’s (The Oracle, 2015, etc.) historical novel focuses on King Solomon and his first wife.
The year is 965 B.C.E., and a young King Solomon is pleased to see the temple planned by his father, King David, being built in Jerusalem. With the wise priest Zadok by his side, Solomon seems “destined for the role he had stepped into: leading God’s chosen people into a new era of greatness and prosperity.” The temple under construction is meant to convey such greatness and will eventually hold the Ark of the Covenant. For his grand scheme, though, Solomon requires a large quantity of gold, and obtaining such a treasure will require negotiation with the often hostile Egyptians. Solomon is untroubled by such a proposition, and he travels to Zoan with a small contingent to meet with Pharaoh Psusennes II. In the process of acquiring the gold, Solomon becomes mesmerized by the pharaoh’s daughter Nicaule. A marriage pact is soon formed that seals peace between the kingdoms of Egypt and Israel. If Nicaule’s unhappiness is any indication, however, such peace is tepid at best. Nicaule is forced to leave behind both her homeland and her lover, Shoshenq, a situation she is powerless to prevent and that leaves her far from cheerful. Will she ever be able to return to Egypt? Will she ever feel any loyalty to Solomon and his reign? Following the plot as Nicaule gives birth, Zadok marvels at the completed temple, and Solomon begins his long decline, the reader is given a view of this legendary time in digestible portions. Although the dialogue tends toward the grand (as when Solomon tells Nicaule: “Your voice is like honey dripping from the belly of a fig”), the story progresses in such a way as to be believable, in increments inspired more by historical possibilities than historical hyperboles. More than a mere biblical bodice-ripper, the narrative provides a studied look at the time of this king and what it might mean, for instance, to visit Solomon’s Temple with its “altar of burnt offering, built of hewn stones with twelve steps leading up to the massive fire pit.”
An inviting look at an ancient king and the lives of those around him.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942546-22-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Medallion Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
No wonder Scarpetta asks, “When did my workplace become such a soap opera?” Answer: at least 10 years ago.
Happy birthday, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. But no Florida vacation for you and your husband, FBI profiler Benton Wesley—not because President Barack Obama is visiting Cambridge, but because a deranged sniper has come to town.
Shortly after everyone’s favorite forensic pathologist (Dust, 2013, etc.) receives a sinister email from a correspondent dubbed Copperhead, she goes outside to find seven pennies—all polished, all turned heads-up, all dated 1981—on her garden wall. Clearly there’s trouble afoot, though she’s not sure what form it will take until five minutes later, when a call from her old friend and former employee Pete Marino, now a detective with the Cambridge Police, summons her to the scene of a shooting. Jamal Nari was a high school music teacher who became a minor celebrity when his name was mistakenly placed on a terrorist watch list; he claimed government persecution, and he ended up having a beer with the president. Now he’s in the news for quite a different reason. Bizarrely, the first tweets announcing his death seem to have preceded it by 45 minutes. And Leo Gantz, a student at Nari’s school, has confessed to his murder, even though he couldn’t possibly have done it. But these complications are only the prelude to a banquet of homicide past and present, as Scarpetta and Marino realize when they link Nari’s murder to a series of killings in New Jersey. For a while, the peripheral presence of the president makes you wonder if this will be the case that finally takes the primary focus off the investigator’s private life. But most of the characters are members of Scarpetta’s entourage, the main conflicts involve infighting among the regulars, and the killer turns out to be a familiar nemesis Scarpetta thought she’d left for dead several installments back. As if.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-232534-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels (Pleasantville, 2015, etc.), deserves a career breakthrough for...
What appears at first to be a double hate crime in a tiny Texas town turns out to be much more complicated—and more painful—than it seems.
With a degree from Princeton and two years of law school under his belt, Darren Mathews could have easily taken his place among the elite of African-American attorneys. Instead, he followed his uncle’s lead to become a Texas Ranger. “What is it about that damn badge?” his estranged wife, Lisa, asks. “It was never intended for you.” Darren often wonders if she’s right but nonetheless finds his badge useful “for working homicides with a racial element—murders with a particularly ugly taint.” The East Texas town of Lark is small enough to drive through “in the time it [takes] to sneeze,” but it’s big enough to have had not one, but two such murders. One of the victims is a black lawyer from Chicago, the kind of crusader-advocate Darren could have been if he’d stayed on his original path; the other is a young white woman, a local resident. Both battered bodies were found in a nearby bayou. His job already jeopardized by his role in a race-related murder case in another part of the state, Darren eases his way into Lark, where even his presence is enough to raise hackles among both the town’s white and black residents; some of the latter, especially, seem reluctant and evasive in their conversations with him. Besides their mysterious resistance, Darren also has to deal with a hostile sheriff, the white supremacist husband of the dead woman, and the dead lawyer’s moody widow, who flies into town with her own worst suspicions as to what her husband was doing down there. All the easily available facts imply some sordid business that could cause the whole town to explode. But the deeper Darren digs into the case, encountering lives steeped in his home state’s musical and social history, the more he begins to distrust his professional—and personal—instincts.
Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels (Pleasantville, 2015, etc.), deserves a career breakthrough for this deftly plotted whodunit whose writing pulses throughout with a raw, blues-inflected lyricism.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-36329-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
