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
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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