A bit slow to get going, but the heady concept, action, and danger pay dividends.
Debut author Finch’s international thriller features a young psychologist researching ancestral memory as a serial killer collects heads.
After Christian Yates completes his doctorate degree in psychology, he begins his career as an assistant professor. This career in academia is very short lived; Christian’s first lecture to undergraduates finds him quickly out of a job, as he has some views that are outside the mainstream. Specifically, he believes that humans have memories of their ancestors contained in their DNA. Although these memories are not readily available, they could be accessed, he posits, through some types of head trauma or the use of psychoactive substances, such as psychedelic mushrooms (hence the use of the latter in some Indigenous cultures). The undergraduates may lap this stuff up, but the senior faculty are simply not having it. All seems lost for Christian until he receives a mysterious job offer to work in Denmark: A company called Norkap Pharmaceuticals wants Christian’s help with their psychotropic drug research and is willing to offer him quite an impressive employment package. As the CEO, Hans Rasmussen, explains to Christian, his theories are “truer than you know.” Christian arrives in Denmark, where he comes under the wing of Hans’ nephew, Henrik. Henrik parties hard, and Christian does his best to keep up. He is also warned that Norkap may be engaged in unethical behavior. Meanwhile, a serial killer with a penchant for decapitation called “the Surgeon” is on the loose. It is believed that the Surgeon has killed eight people so far. The Surgeon is someone that Christian once met in the course of working with a patient who had “an unending flow of ancestral memories and languages that no human could have learned or faked.”
The premise of the story is a unique blend of speculative science and murder mystery—concepts like ancient memories do not typically come up in serial killer narratives. Still, while Christian’s students (the ones he has for one day, anyway) are certainly excited about his ideas, his expository lecturing can be dense. Though his speech gets one character worked up over the ethics of experimenting on worms, it throws an awful lot of information at the reader early on. This info dump, combined with a tragic event in Christian’s past and his difficulties with the patient who exhibited ancestral memories, make for slow-going early chapters. However, when the story moves to Denmark, the plot starts to jell, raising compelling questions (should Norkap be trusted?). When the action transfers to Greenland, Christian is informed almost immediately that he is in great danger—this is a thriller, after all, and peril becomes ever-present. Christian is later told, “We’re part of something far larger than ourselves, a saga that has unfolded over decades, leaving countless lives in ruins.” Serious stuff indeed—the reader can’t resist going forward to find out how it all connects.
A bit slow to get going, but the heady concept, action, and danger pay dividends.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9798856118710
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.
Travel writer Lo Blacklock is back. Ten years after the events of The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), she's attending the opening of a lavish Swiss hotel when, once again, a mystery intervenes.
A decade after she almost died on a luxury cruise and ended up exposing a murder plot, travel journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is trying to get back into the business post-Covid-19 and post–maternity leave. When she's invited to an exclusive hotel launch by the Leidmann Group on the shores of Switzerland’s gorgeous Lake Geneva, her supportive husband, Judah, insists that she should go, and her old boss, Rowan, says that if Lo can score an interview with the reclusive Marcus Leidmann, she’ll publish it in the Financial Times. Leaving Judah and the kids at home in New York, Lo is surprised by a last-minute upgrade to first class, which kicks off her trip in style. The hotel is appropriately awe-inspiring in both scenic location and effortless luxury, and Lo starts to put the memories of last trip’s trauma behind her, thinking that maybe she can just enjoy the experience this time. But then, at dinner, she's surprised to see at least three guests who were also on that original cruise, and when she finds a mysterious note in her room saying "Please come to suite 11 as soon as possible," she gets another shock. To quote William Faulkner, she realizes that “the past is never dead,” and soon Lo is careening across Europe on her way to England, only to find herself embroiled in another murder. The back half of the novel offers her the opportunity to continue her amateur sleuthing, and while she avoids much of the physical danger that plagued her on the cruise a decade ago, she is in very real legal trouble. This is the prolific Ware’s first sequel, and it's fun to spend time with Lo again, as she's both savvy and kindhearted. Unfortunately, the mystery is not as atmospheric and gripping as usual for Ware, though even a lesser Ruth Ware thriller is still worth reading.
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781668025628
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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