BLOOD HONEY

by Poppy Koval ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 2022

In Koval’s debut novel, a struggling journalist tries to figure out what’s turning all of New York City’s honey red.

Months after her dream job at an alternative weekly fell apart, Mims Walsh is a freelance newspaper reporter on the edge of poverty. She needs a big story, and she finds one at an otherwise routine Manhattan community board meeting where she meets Charlie Nobelle, a beekeeper with a strange and slightly sinister problem: The honey that his bees are producing has turned red. It isn’t just his bees, either, Charlie claims; the foul, bitter honey is showing up in hives across the city. Mims isn’t a fan of bees—she has an aversion to insects in general—but she knows that if she can get to the bottom of this apicultural mystery, she may be able to parlay the story into a permanent job somewhere. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Teddy Beasley is so desperate to keep his family’s maraschino cherry business afloat that he’s forged a secret partnership with shadowy businessmen to make quick cash. He agreed to sell corn syrup using labels that claim the stuff is Vermont-made honey. It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but when the product keeps arriving from China, Teddy has no choice but to keep moving it. What’s worse, bees have started hovering around his Brooklyn facility. Fearing this illegal game will cost him his business—and maybe even his freedom—Teddy calls in his estranged older sister, Marlow, who lives in Alaska and is in the process of launching her own jerky business. As the pair attempt to steer the business back to legitimacy, Mims’ investigation draws her closer to a potential source of the red honey.

Over the course of this book, Koval’s prose is bright and incisive, as when she describes Marlow’s complicated emotions when her mother showed her affection: “Even the act of being hugged by her mom, which imparted a feeling of sturdy strength when it came from her grandfather, instead passed along a sort of nervousness, like a vibration passing from one strip of thin metal to another.” Indeed, the characters are deftly drawn throughout; particularly memorable are sensitive oddball Charlie and stoic Marlow, the latter of whom returns to New York after years of self-imposed exile. The book’s primary flaw is that its plot simply isn’t as propulsive as it should be. The book presents itself as a kind of offbeat crime novel, but the stakes aren’t as high as many in that genre. The pacing is a bit too slow, and the central puzzle is a bit too easy to solve. It’s unfortunate, as the image of blood-red honey is highly evocative, and the worlds of beekeeping and maraschino cherry production turn out to be quite colorful. Even so, Koval’s wide array of writerly talents are on full display, and readers are likely to find themselves looking forward to her future works.

A spirited novel that doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of its premise.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-66784-552-4

Page Count: 316

Publisher: BookBaby

Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | THRILLER | CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER | GENERAL FICTION