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
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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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