Though sometimes over-the-top, a treat for those who would love a Roman holiday.
The second installment in Downie’s thriller series features the famous catacombs of Rome.
During a gala performance at the Institute of America in Rome, a shot rings out and panicked figures in white tunics flee the catacombs under that institution’s grounds. The beautiful and resourceful Maj. Daria Vinci of DIGOS (think FBI), attending the gala, is immediately on the case. The dead man is Charles Wraithwhite, a charismatic fellow who was hired to write a postwar history of the institute in order to improve its shopworn image. Was this a suicide, an unfortunate outcome of Russian roulette, or something worse? Charles was not all that he seemed. Was he a threat to somebody? What about the longtime president of the institute—the slightly ghoulish, gaunt, and handsy Taylor Chatwin-Paine? Almost immediately, Daria’s well-fed sidekick, Capt Osvaldo Morbido, guesses that powerful people are obfuscating facts and pulling strings. Sure enough, he is ordered to return to Genoa, and Daria gets a surprise promotion and transfer to Venice, effective immediately. Will Daria attempt to solve the case from afar? Downie speaks Italian fluently and spent many years in Rome, and he clearly loves the city and the culture. This follow-up to Red Riviera (2021), the first in Downie's Daria Vinci Investigation series, abounds with quirky, memorable characters. In fact, the book is so overstuffed, the reader often feels at sea. And some trappings, though not red herrings, seem overdone and indulgent. Bags of jelly beans along with toy gladiator swords are hidden about, sending cryptic messages to those who can decipher them. One thinks of kids at summer camp concocting elaborate, esoteric stories to entertain themselves after they have tired of drawing treasure maps. But one does get a wonderfully detailed tour of Rome from someone who clearly loves it: “Eternal, the city was, a crazy, suffocating, miasmic, endearing enigmatic mess.” It is also, in Downie’s telling, a city that thrives on intrigue.
Though sometimes over-the-top, a treat for those who would love a Roman holiday.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-942892-32-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Alan Squire Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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