An intricate and often intriguing exploration of tensions and secrets in a small town.
In Prill’s mystery novel, an Iowa-based detective, assigned to investigate a former soldier’s death in a nearby rural community, uncovers killings stretching back to the 1940s.
In a time-jumping opener, businessman Richard Frost leaves his home in Brinson, Iowa, on November 7, 1940, never to be seen again, and an unnamed man in his mid-60s in 2020 receives a manuscript that claim to reveal the “truth”: “Everything in this book is true. It’s not historical fiction. It’s not based on enhanced memories—it is the truth.” The novel then delves into the life-changing 1970 experiences of Brent Frost, a high school freshman in Brinson, and 41-year-old Fred Barnes, an Iowa Crimes Commission detective from Des Moines, who comes to the rural town to address a request to investigate the suspicious suicide of a Vietnam veteran. Barnes, who’s recently widowed, soon becomes romantically involved with the requestor, Janice Hinton. Brent, meanwhile, attracts the interest of a local girl after he takes a dare to find out what’s hidden in an area barn. The son of the missing businessman also returns to town, looking for closure. Investigations escalate when telltale evidence turns up in a local well, a fisherman reports that something is stuck in the nearby lake, and Barnes discovers a strange pattern of deaths; later, there’s a tense showdown. In this book, Prill effectively pivots from his previous historical novels set in ancient Rome, including From the Realm of Time (2020), to craft an enjoyable heartland mystery that offers a diverse range of characters—including several surprise criminals and victims. Given the complexity of the world that the author sets in motion, some readers may feel that the dense narrative is challenging to follow at times. Thankfully, Prill also provides a character list upfront for easy reference, as well as an extended epilogue that entertainingly wraps up the fates of this story’s many colorful players.
An intricate and often intriguing exploration of tensions and secrets in a small town.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780990860440
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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