A promising premise with endearing main characters, let down by uneven execution.
The second installment of Mann’s espionage trilogy pulls readers back into the high-stakes world of Lewis and Suzanna, exploring their evolving relationship amid a tangled web of international conspiracy.
Three years after their enemies-to-lovers meeting in The Oxenburg Woman (2024),Lewis and Suzanna’s relationship has deepened and matured. Suzanna—who’s separated from her workaholic husband, Richard—is exploring her connection with Lewis, who’s undergone the most significant character shift: Once sharp-tongued and caustic, he’s softened since his introduction in the first series entry. Although there are still moments of will-they-won’t-they tension, it’s clear the two share a special bond, and talk about a marriage certificate becomes a fixture of the story. Lewis, still the global traveler, is overseeing an infrastructure project overseas, but a “see you soon?” relationship is no longer sufficient for Suzanna, who wants more. Both soon find themselves drawn into another high-stakes international conspiracy, and this time, Suzanna’s at the center. Someone is taking intimidating photos of her, and a shooting in France ignites the intrigue. Over the course of Mann’s novel, Lewis and Suzanna’s dynamic shines, and the twist ending is effective. However, even the initial shooting and its aftershocks fail to generate suspense, because the scenes read more like a cinematic outline than a fully realized plot. The prose often states what its characters are feeling, rather than showing it through action, making it difficult to track the protagonists’ emotional arcs. Flat phrases such as “It was warmer for a little while but then she was cold again and crept to the edge to look out” don’t help. There are also many missed opportunities for the main characters to show emotional warmth.
A promising premise with endearing main characters, let down by uneven execution.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798990792135
Page Count: 393
Publisher: Principle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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