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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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