Picking up directly after The Pale Assassin (2009), this French Revolution thriller includes intrigue, romance and plenty of blood but takes a while to pick up steam.
Displaced aristocrat Eugénie and friend Julien have fled Paris for Eugénie’s rebel-minded cousin Hetta’s house on the English coast. Eugénie can’t return to France because of a fraudulent but binding marriage engagement to Le Fantôme, a Phantom of the Opera/Javert figure with high government ranking and a vast spy network. Eugénie’s brother Armand languishes in Paris prisons awaiting the corrupt trial that will send him to the guillotine for being a royalist and aristo. Le Fantôme’s debonair, sociopathic thug, Guy, tracks Eugénie, Hetta and Julien with disconcerting expertise. However, despite the constant threat of rape, murder and kidnapping, momentum lags for the first 200 pages. Readers know every danger and secret all along; narrative perspective shifts from character to character too quickly to catch hold. When Eugénie and Hetta end up accidentally back in Paris, the plot quickens. The city seethes with bitter fury and revenge-based executions. Romantic connections get befuddled through naivete, and the main characters’ tricky final escapades, while not quite believable, are as exciting and gruesomely successful as befits the Revolutionary setting. Political passion and upheaval are mainly backdrop; if readers loyal to the four main players can stay the course, they’ll like the ending. (cast of historical and fictional characters, timeline, afterward) (Historical thriller. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2361-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
A fantastic stand-alone mystery companion revisits a much-loved sleuth.
Amateur boarding school detective Stevie Bell is back with a new cold case to crack in a companion novel to the Truly Devious trilogy.
After solving one of the greatest murder mysteries of the 20th century, Stevie is at a bit of a loss while back home working at a deli counter during summer break. When the new owner of Camp Wonder Falls—the site of the gruesome (and unsolved) Box in the Woods murders back in the ’70s—invites her over to work on the case for his upcoming documentary and podcast, Stevie immediately says yes. It’s especially appealing since she gets to invite her closest friends, Nate and Janelle, as well as her boyfriend, David, to tag along. When a new murder takes place just as Stevie starts asking questions around town, the gang find themselves in danger once more. Johnson’s hallmark charming humor and lovable characters provide a robust foundation for another cracking mystery, this time ingeniously working with summer-camp and locked-room–mystery tropes. A few snippets relating back to the events in 1978 and Stevie’s empathy for the grieving friends and relatives of the dead, who still yearn for answers, provide a strong emotional grounding for the case. Apart from Janelle, who is Black (and queer), most characters are White. Stevie’s relationship with her lifelong anxiety is particularly well portrayed.
A fantastic stand-alone mystery companion revisits a much-loved sleuth. (author's note) (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-303260-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Not for the faint of heart due to both subject and length, but the intricate plot and magnificently imagined details of...
1920s New York thrums with giddy life in this gripping first in a new trilogy from Printz winner Bray.
Irrepressible 17-year-old Evie delights in her banishment to her Uncle Will’s care in Manhattan after she drunkenly embarrasses a peer in her Ohio hometown. She envisions glamour, fun and flappers, but she gets a great deal more in the bargain. Her uncle, the curator of a museum of the occult, is soon tapped to help solve a string of grisly murders, and Evie, who has long concealed an ability to read people’s pasts while holding an object of their possession, is eager to assist. An impressively wide net is cast here, sprawling to include philosophical Uncle Will and his odd assistant, a numbers runner and poet who dreams of establishing himself among the stars of the Harlem Renaissance, a beautiful and mysterious dancer on the run from her past and her kind musician roommate, a slick-talking pickpocket, and Evie’s seemingly demure sidekick, Mabel. Added into the rotation of third-person narrators are the voices of those encountering a vicious, otherworldly serial killer; these are utterly terrifying.
Not for the faint of heart due to both subject and length, but the intricate plot and magnificently imagined details of character, dialogue and setting take hold and don’t let go. Not to be missed. (Historical/paranormal thriller. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-12611-3
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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