Scary fun that won’t cause nightmares—or will it?
Dark horror by the renowned Norwegian crime novelist.
In the town of Ballantyne, Richard Elauved is a troubled 14-year-old outcast who bullies his classmates. He coerces Tom into a telephone booth (remember those?) and gets him to call Imu Jonasson, an apparently random person whose name he finds in the phone book. But the phone digs into the poor boy’s flesh and eats him up until all traces disappear. Richard goes to the police but cannot persuade them of the horrible truth—for one thing, they can’t find Jonasson’s name in the book—and they demand to know if Richard drowned Tom in the river. In the first third of the tale, all the main characters are teens. Fifteen years pass, and Richard attends a class reunion. Now he is the author of The Night House, the story they’re in and “the teenage horror novel that had changed my life.” He says he came to the reunion to apologize for having bullied everyone, yet all his fellow alums insist he’d been an okay kid, not the nasty bully he’d portrayed in his famous book. So who’s right? Creepy stuff continues, including death by hanging, blood drooling down a car window, transmogrification into a cockroach—you know, standard horror fare. What adds a level of interest is Richard Hansen, who had invented the surname “Elauved” for a curious reason. Perhaps he has a mental illness, given that events belie perception. What is true, and what is the detritus of his fevered brain? Is this a dream within a dream? Some of the evil comes from a surprising source, who advises young Richard, “If you really want to kill them, you have to do it twice. If you don’t, they come back.”But an ill-fated fiend named Jack has the best line: “We’d actually prefer it if you tried to escape. It’s a well-known fact that adrenaline gives meat a bit of extra flavor.”
Scary fun that won’t cause nightmares—or will it?Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780593537169
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.
When one woman takes on another’s identity to uncover a crime, they both become suspects in a murder.
Aubrey Price and Camille Bayliss come from different worlds, only crossing paths because of the discovery that Camille’s husband, powerful lawyer Ben Bayliss, is hiding something terrible that affects them both. As the novel opens, Aubrey is driving Camille’s Range Rover, then teetering into a bar on Camille’s high heels, with Camille’s dress and credit cards and a wig that mimics Camille’s hair, pretending to be her because Ben tracks his wife’s every move and expenditure, and Camille wants to create a smokescreen while she sneaks into his office in search of evidence of that unnamed secret. But the scheme goes awry, and the women become each other’s alibis after Camille finds Ben murdered in their home. The first part of the book builds suspense and misdirection well, with Aubrey and Ben’s straight-arrow partner, Hank Landry, serving as first-person observers in some chapters while others track Camille. She’s a wealthy and privileged woman but not a happy one, stuck under the thumbs of her husband and her tyrannical father, Randall Everett, who pretty much runs their small Louisiana town. Aubrey was orphaned as a teen when her parents died in a car crash and has proudly fended for herself ever since, coming to depend on her four roommates, who have become friends. But as the cast of characters grows, it seems as if almost everyone in town has a motive for killing Ben, and the piling up of suspects and movements among different timelines can sometimes be confusing. And it all comes to a frustrating end when, after a whole school of red herrings, the solution to Ben’s murder arrives out of far left field.
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834459
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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