Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.
Criminal Investigation Department pensioner John Rebus is lured from forced retirement by the world’s most unlikely client.
Wheelchair-bound Morris Gerald Cafferty, known by every criminal in Edinburgh as Big Ger, feels uncharacteristically guilty over the pressure he put on Jack Oram, who managed the Potter’s Bar for Cafferty and helped himself liberally to the till before vanishing four years ago. Now that he’s heard rumors Oram’s back in town, he’d like his old nemesis to track the embezzler down so that Cafferty could have a word with him. Initially incredulous, Rebus agrees to poke around. Meanwhile, Rebus’ old mate DI Siobhan Clarke is looking for another missing person—Cheryl Haggard, who has enough scars to present convincing evidence against her husband, Francis, a uniformed cop accused of domestic violence. Clarke’s old frenemy DI Malcolm Fox, a hotshot who’s vaulted into the Specialist Crime Division, wants her investigation shut down before Francis Haggard can retaliate by implicating half his fellow officers on the Tynecastle force. When Francis takes the dilemma out of Clarke’s hands by going AWOL and turning up conveniently stabbed to death, everything’s resolved—except for all those accusations about the Tynecastle constabulary, and the fate of the dead-or-alive Jack Oram, and what looks increasingly like a revolving door between Edinburgh’s criminal establishment and Edinburgh’s finest. Rebus and Clarke soon establish connections between his case and hers, but that unsurprising news is only the beginning of a series of detonations, figurative and literal, that will ultimately land Rebus, as a teasing prologue shows, standing in the dock himself.
Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-47363-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
Admirably ambitious in scope and mystery.
A small-town sheriff uncovers centuries’ worth of secrets.
Growing up in historic Shereford, New Hampshire, Mandy Grady chafed at being the sheriff’s daughter. After sowing her wild oats in New York for a few years, though, she eventually returned to the tiny town of her youth, and became the new sheriff when her father died. She not only took on his role, but also his obsession with one case he never solved—a case that haunts the town: The disappearance of the entire Dixon family—both parents and four children—during a summer storm in 1998. In the present day, two glamorous, wealthy outsiders, Raquel and Theo Collins, have bought the old Dixon house and are looking to restore it, maybe transform it into a B&B. A stray dog leads them to a gruesome discovery on the property: a well that contains both human bones and a ledger belonging to an 18th-century midwife. Everyone in Shereford knows the old rhyme: “Ding dong bell, the witch is in the well.” Could it be based in truth? Betty and Mason, the enthusiastic heads of the town historical society, connect the ledger to a journal already in their possession and, together with Raquel and a reluctant Mandy, begin to fill in the story. A young woman appeared in Shereford in the midst of a blizzard in the early 18th century. Taking pity, the townsfolk begged her to stay—until babies started dying under her watch, and she was sentenced to death for witchcraft. Now Mandy has to figure out how these ancient sins are related to the more contemporary crimes—because someone in Shereford knows exactly what happened to the Dixons. Gardner deftly juggles a number of characters, plot threads, secrets, time periods, and motives, delivering a satisfyingly layered novel that interrogates the insular lives and histories of small towns.
Admirably ambitious in scope and mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9781538765142
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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