An entertaining and exuberant suspense tale about murderous revenge in the literary world.
A reclusive writer who’s a fugitive fights for his innocence in this detective novel.
Bequette’s third installment of a mystery series is a departure from his typical fare featuring resilient police detective Joe Turner. While Turner pops up sporadically in this volume, it is 30-something American writer Owen Prescott, a Dartmouth graduate from a wealthy family, who steals the spotlight. For over a decade, Prescott has enjoyed a solitary, secluded life of anonymity in the English countryside, far from the woman-chasing, vibrant social life he once relished. Flashback chapters tell the story of a time when Turner was assisting Prescott, who wrote under the pseudonym Ancil Bradford, with Boston book signings in 2013, despite the menacing omnipresence of obsessed stalker Desiree Richins. Desiree’s behavior necessitated a restraining order. That problem became coupled with a lawsuit filed by former creative writing instructor Norvel Anendale against Prescott for plagiarism, claiming he’d co-authored the novelist’s prize-winning bestseller, Orchards of Grace. Neither of those nuisances was enough to spook Prescott from continuing to celebrate his literary success, but he landed in hot water anyway as the lead suspect in Anendale’s violent murder. Soon after, Prescott eluded prosecution by fleeing America for Europe and went into hiding. Fledgling FBI agent Alyssa Wagner revives the cold case (“A native of Boston, Alyssa recalled the Owen Prescott disappearance as a teenager and was immediately intrigued by the idea of bringing the fugitive to justice”). She becomes determined to garner positive attention in her new position with the aid of facial recognition technology. Meanwhile, Prescott has become antsy, yearning for the literary spotlight. He ventures out in public, where freelance journalist Margo Stark spots him and decides to insinuate herself into his life with the intention of writing a career-defining, exclusive feature. As Wagner narrows her search and surveillance, edging closer to apprehending Prescott, the tale is complemented by a generous Boston backstory, chronicling the author’s legal troubles a decade earlier, all running parallel to his present melodrama. The denouement, filled with hidden identities and startling events, is a shocker.
With the amount of characters Bequette incorporates in his novel, the tale is slow to gain narrative momentum and only moves into high gear after all of his players and their assorted backstories are established. The author’s previous headliner, Turner, takes a backseat this time, serving as Prescott’s former literary agent, which may or may not appeal to fans of the series. Nevertheless, Bequette’s prose is reliably crisp and descriptive, and lots of intrigue and suspense are embedded in a thrillingly serpentine story with plenty of twists and turns as Prescott tries to worm his way out of complex litigation. Also captivating is the backstory of Prescott’s longstanding, difficult relationship with his father, particularly during a vividly portrayed duck hunting trip, where shame and trauma mark the writer’s memory of his childhood. In the present, his father attempts to preserve the family name after Prescott has been charged with Anendale’s murder based on DNA evidence at the scene. With its surfeit of subplots and characters, the book eventually coalesces into one big hunt for justice as Prescott attempts to evade his pursuers and a surprise psychotic killer emerges in an ending few readers will predict.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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
© 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.
