A satisfying mystery in a vividly realized historical setting.
In this historical mystery set in ancient Egypt, a career diplomat searches for his missing brother-in-law while also investigating a case of royal blackmail.
Hani is back in Holmes’ second book (Bird in a Snare, 2020) in the Lord Hani mystery series. The protagonist is a former diplomat with serious reservations about King Akhenaten’s rule. Policy disagreements have prompted him to leave active service in the diplomatic corps since he’s unable to enforce a foreign policy he doesn’t respect. But the bigger issue is religion; King Akhenaten traded observing polytheistic traditions for worshipping a sun god, “dazzling Aten, the Visible One.” The new religion makes it an uneasy time in the changing kingdom, as does a recently founded, unstable capital city, which still has “a look of rawness.” “Everything was dust and gravel except for the whitewashed splendor of the temples and palaces,” Hani observes cynically. Despite Hani’s displeasure with the new regime, he tries to keep himself and his family in the government’s good graces. Hani’s brother-in-law, Amen-em-hut, a prophet of Amen-Ra, is not as diplomatic. After openly complaining about Akhenaten’s heresy and suggesting he be assassinated, he’s gone missing. Drawing on his contacts in the capital, Hani begins his search for him, but he’s soon asked to help with another problem. Kiya, the king’s wife and a friend of Hani’s, is being blackmailed for having an affair with an artisan sculptor. As if things weren’t chaotic enough, Hani agrees to host Aziru—a newly added vassal—and his entourage as a favor to the king. A crowded house becomes more crowded. “When was the last time anything normal happened in our kingdom?” Hani asks Maya, his faithful scribe and constant companion.
The novel meticulously constructs its historical setting. The cast is equally intricate, comprising a lively circle of Hani’s family, friends, and acquaintances. The major plot threads are Hani’s investigations, but the novel also juggles several satisfying minor arcs, including Maya’s marriage to Hani’s daughter Sat-hut-haru and Hani’s youngest daughter’s interest in medicine. Holmes captures the pressures and anxieties of regime change, religious allegiances, and political jockeying, but the author never loses sight of the drama, joy, and pain within Hani’s household. Holmes expertly develops the cast and setting; for example, in a scene that vividly reunites Hani and Kiya, Hani notices that “her big almond eyes looked twice as enormous edged with kohl. She wore a short Nubian-style wig, angled below the ears to become even shorter in back.” He goes on: “It was the latest style, and it had never looked better than upon this glittering young princess.” The danger of such a carefully researched subject is that the material can capsize the plot, but Holmes ably inserts historical exposition into his storytelling. Occasionally, the Byzantine network of characters makes it difficult to connect with minor figures, but an overstuffed cast makes for more suspects and opportunities for sequels.
A satisfying mystery in a vividly realized historical setting.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73498-683-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: N.L. Holmes
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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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