An entertaining espionage tale with a memorable cast wielding otherworldly skills.
In this supernatural novel, a Nazi operative infiltrates a house of spy-hunting psychics in World War II–era Philadelphia.
Nazi spy Gertrude Whitehead’s mission is simple—steal a book of ancient spells and charms for Hitler. This particular grimoire is likely at Hamilton House in the neighborhood of Germantown, where psychics living in a 20-room mansion track down Nazi spies. Gertrude, a skilled psychic herself, poses as the house’s newly appointed temp secretary named Tillie. This gives her time to find the book and perhaps enact revenge on the psychic Allies she believes are responsible for her “Occult Wizard” lover’s disappearance. The interim psychic team leader, Isadora Turgenev, already has her plate full. She performs house duties while helping a teenager named Rebecca hide from the Nazis. They want her Nazi spy uncle’s black-magic spells. But suspicions grow when it’s clear someone is snooping around the mansion late at night. Is Rebecca simply nosy or is the new temp up to no good? Isadora will need her wits and her spells to topple a Nazi scheme and unmask a traitor in the psychics’ midst. Ainsworth’s short novel, the fourth installment of a series, amps up suspense with a quintessential confined setting. The Nazi agent, for example, as a co-worker/roommate, is always dangerously close to Isadora and the other residents. The rest of the team stands out, from the nonpsychic chief security officer to the resident chef, who can conjure a “spirit guide.” But the female characters shine brightest; level-headed Isadora, despite her doubts, proves a stellar leader. And Rebecca, using the black arts her uncle taught her, turns out to be as capable as the more experienced psychics. Throughout the story, Ainsworth skillfully transitions between Isadora’s narrative perspective and Gertrude’s. Gertrude relates facing off against her enemy “Dizzy Izzy.” Supernatural abilities are on full display in the final act, which, though gratifying, is sadly over too soon.
An entertaining espionage tale with a memorable cast wielding otherworldly skills.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2022
ISBN: 9798215726563
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
