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M, KING'S BODYGUARD

A briskly paced, richly atmospheric historical thriller.

In 1901, as the crowned heads of Europe arrive in London for Queen Victoria’s funeral, a Scotland Yard detective assigned to protect the new king, Edward VII, must outwit a foreign assassin whose target may in fact be Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

This lively and assured historical drama opens as the reign of “tiny, and shrewd” Queen Victoria is replaced by that of her libidinous son, Albert, aka Edward VII, whose bodyguard, William Melville, is the novel’s world-weary narrator. “A Catholic peasant promoted far above his station,” as he jokingly puts it, Melville has risen to Detective Chief Superintendent “through tenacity, low cunning and [his] own clumping fists.” Irish by birth and suspicious by nature, he knows that the imminent royal funeral procession, as it winds through London, will become, “for terrorists...one long shooting gallery, with every prize a jackpot.” European anarchists are Melville’s main suspects (“how I despised these fanatics”), and, sure enough, villainous zealots promptly materialize, leading Melville on a merry chase, though he quickly sniffs out the existence of a murderous plot far more labyrinthine than one prompted by pure ideology. “Politics is a stately dance with poisoned daggers,” he observes, as he begins to doubt even his German sidekick, Gustav Steinhauer, who is the kaiser’s master spy and therefore on the right side. Or is he? Both Melville and Steinhauer, along with many other characters, are based on historical personages, and their portraits—along with that of stinking, foggy London—are finely drawn. The narrative pace never flags, and even the obligatory scenes of shootouts, explosions, and hurtling locomotives are refreshingly vivid. The novel’s quieter moments are, however, its best, and none is better than its final twist. “Let’s just say I work with certain people who share your concerns about developments on the Continent,” an aristocratic stranger says, inviting Melville for a chat at his club. “We could use a man of your experience.” So the next installment has surely begun.

A briskly paced, richly atmospheric historical thriller.

Pub Date: July 13, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4905-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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NOW OR NEVER

As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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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