Everything and everybody is larger than life yet somehow smaller than life as well.
The latest stand-alone from the chronicler of Eve Duncan and her remarkable family tells the story of an equally remarkable bunch of freelance law enforcers arrayed against a nefarious mercenary.
Jorge Masenak has outdone himself with his latest coup: Stealing a dozen racehorses lodged at Morocco’s St. Eldon’s Academy, kidnapping 59 students from the girls school, passing them around to his confederates, and threatening to execute them if any government agency makes a move against him. Cue the entrance of rogue CIA agent Alisa Flynn, who promptly persuades tech mogul Gabe Korgan to help her rescue the girls. Alisa is particularly close to Sasha Nalano, her official ward, who’s a wizard with horses, and Sasha is especially close to Chaos, an ill-tempered stallion with preternatural speed—so close that girl and horse communicate telepathically. Enlisting soldier of fortune John Gilroy to help with logistics, Alisa and Korgan quickly devise a plan to rescue the hostages. But Masenak escapes, taking Sasha and Chaos, whom he’s determined to have Sasha train on a dramatically accelerated schedule so he can be raced one-on-one against Nightshade, the Triple Crown winner owned by ruthless lumber baron Marcus Reardon. Instead of sweating the details of plotting or characterization, Johansen sets this modern swashbuckler in an alternative reality in which the heroes can infiltrate the villain’s armored strongholds at will, characters compare each other to Wonder Woman and Indiana Jones, and the software has powers as superhuman as the people who develop and use it in the field.
Everything and everybody is larger than life yet somehow smaller than life as well.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1313-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A little humor, a little romance, a little detection, but no solid takeaway.
Murder disrupts a bookstore’s grand opening in Winthrop, Washington.
Tess Harrow is going all out for the launch of Paper Trail, the painstakingly renovated bookshop on the site of her father’s old hardware store. Not only has she scheduled her latest novel, Fury Under the Floorboards, for release the night of the store’s launch party, but she’s allowed her daughter, 15-year-old Gertie, to plan a menu of tasty treats, including sushi-grade tuna flown in fresh that morning from Seattle. So she’s less than thrilled when her mother, mega-diva Bernadette Springer, shows up even earlier than the fish with her boyfriend, Levi Parker, in tow. Parker is famous all over Instagram, accused of murdering two women in New York and one in Detroit, although no one’s been able to make the charges stick. But this time, he’s the one who ends up in the morgue. Relieved as Tess is that her mother won’t be Parker’s next victim, his death derails the plans for her gala reopening big-time. First, journalist Mumford Umberto ditches his plans for an extended interview with Tess in favor of covering the crime. Next, podcaster Neptune Jones sets up shop down the street, drawing away the huge crowds that Tess expected at Paper Trail. Worst of all, Sheriff Boyd, who Tess keeps hoping will declare his feelings for her, invites Neptune to stay at his house and help him crack the case. Tess spends so much energy grieving the injustice of it all that she barely has time to solve the mystery, even when it looks as if her mom is a prime suspect. Although Berry’s dialogue is crisp and funny, her scattershot plotting may leave some readers wishing for a bit less.
A little humor, a little romance, a little detection, but no solid takeaway.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781728248660
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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