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THE MEMORY MAN

Everything—the motive, the modus operandi, the death scenes, the charismatic villain’s ability to inspire deeply misplaced...

Savile (Coldfall Wood, 2018, etc.) launches his new Eurocrimes series with this tale of revenge served curdled.

Just as Vatican envoy Ernesto Donatti is asking Peter Ash, of the British branch of the European Crime Division, for help in tracking down Monsignor Jacques Tournard, a newly appointed Paris bishop, who vanished shortly after a receiving a package containing a human tongue, Swedish minister Henrik Frys asks Francesca Varg, Ash’s local counterpart, for help in tracking down Jonas Anglemark, the gay Swedish cabinet minister who’s also gone missing. The two disappearances—one of them soon revised to a murder—are obviously connected, and knowing genre fans will wait impatiently until Frankie and Ash make the connection: a message both men received, Tournard along with the tongue Anglemark donated, that reads only “Memini Bonn”: Remember Bonn. The hints Savile throws out in his elliptical opening scene are already sufficient to link both men to a long-buried secret, and eventually Frankie and Ash, often working at cross-purposes, trace its genesis to an orphanage run by the EuropaChild Foundation. Meanwhile, their quarry has moved on, marking each of his targets by sending them a body part taken from a previous target before moving in for the kill. Ash stakes out Pietro Danilo, the former manager of a Romanian EuropaChild facility, as bait; Frankie goes through the paperwork on the mounting list of victims looking for more clues; and Laura Byrne, the office administrator who’s been Ash’s only surviving colleague back in London ever since the death of their friend and partner Mitch Greer, seethes when her frantic phone calls to Ash go to voicemail.

Everything—the motive, the modus operandi, the death scenes, the charismatic villain’s ability to inspire deeply misplaced confidence in both his victims and the authorities—is just a little too pat, emphatic, and predictable. The result reads like a bloody synopsis of all the serial-killing revenge fantasies you’ve ever read.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-7278-8842-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Severn House

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

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PRETTY GIRLS

Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...

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Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.

The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.

Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015

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NINTH HOUSE

With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...

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Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.

Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.

With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

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