A riveting entry in a multivolume series that continues to deliver strong characters and suspense.
This 13th installment of a thriller series finds a combat-trained pastor investigating a string of Vatican-related murders in Rome.
Pope Paul VII plans to unite Christianity across the globe and all denominations by “rehabilitating” Martin Luther and Jan Hus “in the eyes” of Roman Catholics. For this sure-to-be controversial move, the pope gathers several scholars to assist only for two of them to die unexpectedly. While one of those deaths was an apparent heart attack, the other scholar and his wife were fatally shot. An anonymous letter to the Vatican claims that both scholars were murdered and threatens the remaining experts. The pope responds by seeking help from his friend Stephen Grant, a New York Lutheran pastor and former CIA agent and Navy SEAL. Stephen recommends CDM International Strategies and Security, an organization filled with proficient individuals he has worked alongside. Readers know that a covert group has targeted the pope’s scholars, deeming them heretics. Father Pietro Filoni is the villains’ resident assassin, whose series of murders is far from over. As Stephen and CDM investigate the killings, the sinister, shadowy culprits hope to acquire information by getting someone close to the pope, even if it takes coercion. A power shift among the villains sparks even more murders, and Stephen will once again have to use his combat skills. Keating spotlights a multitude of new and returning characters in his latest novel. He aptly details players’ backstories and relationships, and though Stephen is once again an appealing hero, Filoni is this book’s standout character. He’s so meticulous and methodical in carrying out his assassinations that he’s an especially disquieting villain. He’s also the reason this installment is noticeably bloody despite being less action-oriented than preceding volumes. Nevertheless, there’s hefty suspense, particularly with readers knowing the baddies have a mole and that Filoni is exceptional at covering his tracks. And while it’s not a central theme in the narrative, the author further explores the pastor’s duality—a man of God who sometimes has no choice but to kill.
A riveting entry in a multivolume series that continues to deliver strong characters and suspense. (disclaimer, dedication, bibliography, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 377
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Fans will relish every high-energy moment without demanding rational explanations for every detail.
A retired hit man’s wish to impress his new love leads him back into a thicket of crime and corruption.
During the dinner date they’re finally going out on, Chicago area therapist Gwendolyn Lord shares with English professor Cameron Winter a story she’s just heard from forensic psychologist Livy Swain, an old school friend, of an impossible crime. Owen McKay, arrested six months ago for killing his wife and son and crying, “It’s still there! Still there!,” was shot to death with a nail gun inside his closely watched prison cell. Though his initial reaction is idle curiosity, Winter resolves to show off his prowess to Gwendolyn by solving the mystery. Dr. Billy Whitefield, the pathologist who conducted the postmortem on McKay, shares with Winter a monstrous revelation that he’s been blackmailed into concealing: He removed a spidery attachment from McKay’s brain whose existence was deleted from the official report. After a friend at his college links the implant to Thaumatix—a company whose motto is “We’re in the business of miracles”—Winter learns of another case that sounds eerily similar: the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Connecticut high school student by a previously inoffensive carpenter who’s killed before Winter can question him. Surrounded by assassins and amoral corporate overlords, Winter leans more and more into his relationship with Gwendolyn, though the person he most wants to talk to is the Recruiter, the nameless boss he trusted to make life-or-death decisions when he worked as a contract killer. Miraculously, the Recruiter, who’s vanished, returns to Winter’s life. But what if he can’t be trusted any more than everyone else?
Fans will relish every high-energy moment without demanding rational explanations for every detail.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781613166864
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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