An engaging, sophisticated, and wide-ranging whodunit.
In this third installment of a mystery series, two actors associated with a stage production of Romeo and Juliet die, and an interim artistic director must solve the murders before opening night.
Larkin Day has already solved two homicides in novels by Dieker. Now, Larkin is the interim artistic director of the Summer Shakespeare Festival under the aegis of Howell College in Iowa. The former festival director and the previous Juliet were sacked for having an adulterous affair. The ex-director’s daughter, Rebecca Morris, has been given the job of assistant props master as a kind of legacy privilege. Because she is a minor, a big deal is made of her having to be chaperoned at all times. Soon, Tyler Mackintosh, the production’s Romeo, is found dead, having drunk from a cyanide-spiked potion flask. Was it meant for the actor playing Juliet? Later, the festival’s original Juliet—the disgraced one—is found stabbed, but she was actually poisoned beforehand. Then there is the matter of real daggers versus fake ones, assorted potion bottles, and lots of prop switching, either accidental or intentional. And along the way, there are various romances, jealousies, and red herrings. Dieker is a master of obfuscation. The enjoyable story raises a host of tantalizing questions. Whodunit and why? And will the show go on? The author is a versatile writer with many interests, including financial planning and personal development, which she weaves into the book. For example, readers observe Larkin always pursuing her elusive best self. (The protagonist’s best friend, freelance writer Anni Morgan, seems to be Dieker’s avatar.) The author can skillfully turn a phrase, as when a well-to-do character comes out with a “tinkly, wealthy laugh” to mask her careless irresponsibility. Another plus is that readers get a close reading of Shakespeare and a look at the many ambiguities and subtleties in Romeo and Juliet that an artistic director must deal with. Dieker appears delightfully curious about virtually everything, and the audience profits from that. There is even a short story appended as a kind of lagniappe. But the intriguing mind games that are played throughout the novel may be a bit too subtle for some readers.
An engaging, sophisticated, and wide-ranging whodunit.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781959565130
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Shortwave Media
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PERSPECTIVES
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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