A largely satisfying second volume that brings new plot threads to the Element series.
Jenny O’Rourke continues her investigation into her family’s occult connections in this, the second volume of the Element series of mysteries.
A few months after her father was arrested along with the other leaders of his secret society—dubbed “the Punishers” by the media—O’Rourke hopes the cult’s crimes are history. Then she sees on the news that her friend Katie Dorcy has been found dead in the creek behind Red Rock Farm. It is the same farm where Jenny grew up and where the order conducted its deadly rituals. Jenny is still traumatized by her own near fatal run-in with the order, and the cult’s infamy has made a tourist attraction of her tiny hometown of Brandtville, Pennsylvania, now known as “Bloody Brandtville.” Jenny can’t help but blame herself for Katie’s death, and she and her boyfriend, Ryan Brandt (whose father was also one of the Punishers) set to work investigating it. A symbol found on Katie’s body suggests that one of the Punishers is still at large and may be trying to reestablish the order. When Jenny runs into a figure from her past, an opportunity presents itself: Can she discover the truth about what happened to Katie by joining the order herself? In this second volume of the Element trilogy, Slawecki writes with urgency and imagination, speeding the plot along between sinister locations and tense interactions. The primary flaw, such as it is, is that the characters tend to speak in the melodramatic vernacular of reality TV contestants. (Even the narration sometimes slips into this language. When Jenny learns that Katie’s husband suspects that she was having an affair, she thinks, “Whoa! Mind blown. She never mentioned any of this to me.”) While the informality is sometimes a mood-killer, it is by no means a book-ruiner, and the story is intricate enough to keep the reader invested. Both the author and Jenny take the threats seriously enough to prevent the more contrived elements of the plot from pushing the book into the realm of camp. Fans of The Da Vinci Code or True Detective will enjoy this maximalist mix of crime, conspiracy, and the occult.
A largely satisfying second volume that brings new plot threads to the Element series.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73460-043-8
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Graylyn Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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