A quick and lively read that should appeal to fans of both murder mysteries and ghost stories.
An apparition haunts a hotel in a small town in western New York state in this novel.
On a stormy fall night just before Halloween, a ghost appears to a server at the local inn in Akron. The specter seems to be leaving bloody footprints, which suddenly disappear. Shortly thereafter, Wendy Kulbrick, another server, is found on the third floor of the hotel with her head bashed in. No one ever goes on that floor, and Steve, the owner, doesn’t know how she got there. It is up to Senior Investigator Sgt. Mike O’Brien to solve the case. His job gets complicated when he attends a séance led by local librarian Rae Dembrowsky and a ghost speaks through O’Brien, revealing his own history with a spirit. The investigator had been in an accident with a friend named Greta, who died; he had never confessed his romantic feelings to her. Soon, he learns the inn has a history not only involving hauntings, but also a missing artwork called Lady with a Rose, assumed to be a valuable painting. Wendy and bartender Joe Frankenhauser are suspected of trying to find the portrait, which the owners failed to do. Meanwhile, Steve and his manager, Sharon Cottrell, attempt to keep the inn open and discover the new publicity is actually attracting customers. O’Brien has to figure out if Wendy was murdered by supernatural forces or by someone who saw her as competition for Lady. Will the sergeant crack the case and find peace with Greta? Mixing a ghost story with a more realistic mystery is Karl’s (Strange and Disturbing, 2016, etc.) best idea here. It allows her to build up her small town and populate it with intriguing characters. It also gives her a lot of red herrings for the whodunit. The biggest fault of the book is that readers don’t get a lot of scenes starring the two phantoms the author introduces. They don’t appear much, so the audience doesn’t get to know them well in present-day Akron and glimpses only brief histories. Since this is the first installment of a series, readers may find out more about them later. Otherwise, this is an engaging and tidy little tale.
A quick and lively read that should appeal to fans of both murder mysteries and ghost stories.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974024-22-3
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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