A fast, fulfilling read with plenty of twists.
An offbeat whodunit that will prompt readers to wonder: Did “it” actually happen?
In his fifth novel, Harries seems to blend elements of memoir and fiction as he tells the complex story of his ancestors, inspired by taking a genetic ancestry test. In a style that calls to mind the Sherlock Holmes tales, the author methodically excavates the roots of his family tree and uncovers a dark “family business.” His initial research focuses on his great-grandfather Abram Isakowitsch, who moved from his native Riga to the United Kingdom in 1888. Nothing so strange about that, but it’s not long until the events that Harries recounts start to stretch credulity. Isakowitsch changes his name to Abraham Harris, whom government documents identify as a tailor—an occupation he never held. Shockers start early on with the author’s discovery that his great-grandfather owned a pub where one of Jack the Ripper’s victims was last seen. Even more jaw-dropping details follow, as “Harris” was a former operative of the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, for whom he was a prized assassin (last known body count: 78). When panic began to grip London in 1888 over the Ripper murders, Britain’s prime minister, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, recruited Harris to track down and assassinate the infamous serial killer, according to the author’s research. The book slides between different time periods as Harris recounts adventures and misadventures of other ancestors. The chapter format makes it easy to follow the tangled timelines by listing the dates, locations, and cast of characters at the start of each. Later, the author learns, his mother’s great-aunt Mina Kapelus (a member of the Left SR Party) participated in a botched attempt to assassinate Lenin in 1918; in response, the Bolsheviks killed her and displayed her coffin on the street. Or did they? Harries teases readers with a subtitle that brands the book of “Dubious Veracity,” and he quips before the story begins, “The truth may be stranger than fiction, but it’s not as much fun. That is, of course, if you believe I’m not telling the truth.” Throughout, he displays consummate skill as a spinner of mysteries, and he recounts them all with a welcome and unexpected dash of humor.
A fast, fulfilling read with plenty of twists.Pub Date: June 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-950628-08-7
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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