A pleasant if somewhat unsurprising literary diversion.
Maass’ debut novel blends romance and poetry with the language of flowers.
Stanford University graduate student Lucy Silver is spending a summer near Oxford, England, researching the life and work of mysterious British poet Elizabeth Blackspear, who authored several collections, including 1951’s The Language of Flowers. Lucy’s motives are more than just academic, however: Her English grandmother exchanged fond letters with Blackspear, and three years ago, Lucy inherited letters they exchanged. Soon after Lucy’s arrival in rural England, she becomes embroiled in a series of power plays by the current custodians of the Blackspear estate and their greedy rival, while she doggedly continues her research and uncovers hidden messages in the poet’s walled garden—a task that Lucy likens to the plot of an Agatha Christie mystery. Aided by fellow archivist Rajiv Resham and landscape worker Sam,Lucy does detective work to find the links between Blackspear’s life, poetry, and garden, which could have a significant impact on the poet’s legacy. In addition to Christie, Maass’ novel evokes Dan Brown’s 2003 bestseller The Da Vinci Code, with suspense arising from poring over poetic passages as well as the study of flowers and plants; Blackspear’s textual references to the latter seem “almost like allusions to something else,” Lucy notices early on, and this “seems significant, like a piece of the puzzle, even if she doesn’t know exactly what the puzzle is.” The prose is evocative and ornate at times: “Popping a few berries in her mouth is like tasting summer—deep and sweet, with an occasional tart one for contrast.” However, the unfolding of the mystery at the novel’s center occasionally feels predictable. Indeed, some readers may deduce the novel’s big reveal before the characters do, and the ending, which resolves multiple problems facing Lucy and her comrades, feels too much like a deux ex machinato be believable.
A pleasant if somewhat unsurprising literary diversion.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68463-131-5
Page Count: 344
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.
Christmas is coming, but so is trouble for South Lick, Indiana.
Robbie Jordan, owner and chief cook at Pans ’N Pancakes, returns from solving a murder in California just in time for the holiday rush, which is complicated more than most Christmastimes by a number of surprises that disrupt her circle of friends. First, her assistant, Danna Beedle, gets a visit from Marcus Vandemere, a young biracial man claiming to be her half brother, an assertion that thrills Danna despite the doubts of some friends and relatives. Next comes a fire that nearly destroys the home of anesthesiologist Dr. William Geller, a racist whose wife, Tina, reportedly left him years ago. When a skeleton turns up in the attic, the not-so-esteemed doctor has some explaining to do. Robbie’s nemesis, Detective Octavia Slade, who recently married Robbie’s former boyfriend, is more willing than usual to accept help from Robbie, who has a knack for finding things out. The next to die is Tina’s twin, Toni, who knew Marcus from karate classes. Toni’s husband is the prime suspect, but Robbie’s convinced the fatalities are connected. With help from her boyfriend and her network of friends, she attempts to clear things up before the killer spoils her holiday by adding her to his list.
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2317-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
