Thomas’ virtuosity shows in this fast-paced and intricate yet emotionally moving mystery.
Moving between Austin, Singapore, and Madeira, Thomas’ first contemporary mystery delivers an irresistible ensemble and a raft of surprises as crime-solving librarians solve double murder mysteries while guarding their own secrets.
Building on her bestselling and critically acclaimed Lady Sherlock historical mystery series and historical romances including My Beautiful Enemy (2014), Thomas conquers the art of genre-blending contemporary crime fiction. When her husband disappears under a cloud of major financial malfeasance, Hazel Lee trades her Singapore penthouse for the peace and comfort of life as a library worker in Austin, Texas. With warm memories and her beloved grandmother close by, her childhood hometown seemed like the perfect refuge. But just days after she starts her new job, two patrons are found dead in suspicious circumstances and suspicion weighs heavy on her and her colleagues, every one of whom has something to hide. Sophie, the uber-professional head librarian, is a single mother who worries that a criminal investigation could break her vulnerable family apart. The second in charge, Jonathan, is a lovelorn gay military veteran who’s carrying some heavy scars. Astrid fears that her strange secrets and lies and intimate connections to one victim could land her in the detectives’ crosshairs. And Hazel is weary, having already fled the stench of scandal and police suspicion in one country. Soon the core four are bonding together to solve the mystery before one of them ends up in prison (or worse). Thomas weaves the multicultural ensemble’s stories together seamlessly with vivid and frequently beautiful writing. The single drawback is the occasional reliance on coincidence. Between the intrigue flowing from complex cryptocurrency and other gray-market sleights of hand and a kind of serial serendipity regarding the personal connections among the central cast, plot contrivances sometimes border on convoluted. But the setting and the relationship scenes—whether focused on the friendships among the librarians or between the librarians and their family members or romantic interests—are finely observed every time. This knockout mystery mixes the camaraderie of The Thursday Murder Club with the chic family and romantic drama of Crazy Rich Asians.
Thomas’ virtuosity shows in this fast-paced and intricate yet emotionally moving mystery.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780593640456
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
PROFILES
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
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
© 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.
