A captivating mystery that oozes charm, danger, and romance.
A young woman vacations in the Greek isles, hoping for rest and relaxation; she finds mystery and murder instead.
In this first of Monnin’s Intrepid Traveler mysteries, 35-year-old American Stefanie Adams becomes lost walking in Fira, the capital of Santorini, a Greek island in the Aegean. Thomas Burkhardt, a handsome, 40-ish German, comes to her rescue when a pair of tipsy men harasses her. After sharing a drink, the two part without exchanging numbers and “before he could make an offer she didn’t want to refuse.” The next day, she sees him at a museum exhibition where she admires the legendary Snake Goddess of Akrotiri, a small, exquisite gold statue. When the museum is evacuated due to a burst pipe, someone steals the artifact. Emma Keller, a newlywed at the exhibition with her husband, Jason, suggests Stefanie might be involved in the theft. Emma knows Stefanie’s father was connected to the robbery of a similar Greek statue 40 years earlier. Stefanie’s anger at Emma’s inference turns to shock the next day when she finds her murdered in the VIP section of a ferry headed to Crete. Two crimes—the statue theft and Emma’s homicide—link to Stefanie. “Coincidences require more scrutiny,” says a policeman, noting how often Stefanie’s path crossed with Emma’s in the days before she died. Stefanie vows to find the killer. It must be someone in the VIP section—the suspects include a bearded backpacker, a sun-tanned Brit, a glamorous redhead, her male companion, newlywed Jason, and Thomas. Stefanie turns out to be an intriguing protagonist. In addition to Thomas’ looks and charisma, she is drawn to his love of antiquities. She studied to be an archaeologist but then, in a seemingly unusual career move, became a private banker. Along with the striking hero, murder, and thievery, the adventure of foreign travel is a hallmark of Monnin’s engaging book. The story’s sense of place is enriched by the author’s personal familiarity with the Greek isles’ rocky shores, volcanic sand beaches, and brilliant blue sky. Images are strong, such as a yellow gauze shawl draped on bare shoulders and a meal of soutzoukakia and dolmades ending with rich Greek coffee.
A captivating mystery that oozes charm, danger, and romance.Pub Date: May 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68512-104-4
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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