A suspenseful tale undercut by weak writing.
A religious thriller structurally similar to The Da Vinci Code, with ancient Hindu Vedas replacing hoary Christian mysteries.
Mitra (If There Wasn’t Death, 2006) has taken the notion of a possible fifth Veda—a sacred Sanskrit text—and given it the international murder mystery treatment. Here, the discovery, and subsequent disappearance, of an ancient diary sets a treasure hunt in motion, bringing the CIA, al-Qaida and unscrupulous scholars on the trail of an unwitting computer geek. Satya Vishalguri’s connection to the missing manuscript stems from his few dates with paper-expert Padmina, who contacted him just before her murder. Teaming with Padmina’s sister—the sharp-tongued Veenalaxmi—Satya learns that Padmina had attempted to return the diary to Chatur Lal, her former professor. The two set off for Delhi to confront Lal, now paranoid after his participation in an expedition into the mountains north of Kabul, during which he both discovered and lost the mysterious manuscript, save for one unintelligible page. Soon, a few suspect characters enlist their aid to break its code: an ancient Sanskrit scholar; one of Lal’s colleagues; a billionaire who claims to be the descendant of Emperor Ashoka; and Veenalaxmi’s ex-husband, Karimba, a one-time NFL player with ties to the CIA. The plotlines and theories twist and shift, but alas, innumerable missing words, a confusing lack of punctuation and poor writing distract from the action: “Someone had taste of blood and was not hesitant to kill again. The room was searched. For that particular piece of paper or it was just random.” It’s a pity, since Mitra has concocted a thought-provoking plot with well-drawn characters, from the genial sap Satya to the continually surprising Karimba. The resolution to the mystery is a bit implausible but works within the construct of the story.
A suspenseful tale undercut by weak writing.Pub Date: April 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1483921396
Page Count: 344
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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