A riveting entry in a multivolume series that continues to deliver strong characters and suspense.
This 13th installment of a thriller series finds a combat-trained pastor investigating a string of Vatican-related murders in Rome.
Pope Paul VII plans to unite Christianity across the globe and all denominations by “rehabilitating” Martin Luther and Jan Hus “in the eyes” of Roman Catholics. For this sure-to-be controversial move, the pope gathers several scholars to assist only for two of them to die unexpectedly. While one of those deaths was an apparent heart attack, the other scholar and his wife were fatally shot. An anonymous letter to the Vatican claims that both scholars were murdered and threatens the remaining experts. The pope responds by seeking help from his friend Stephen Grant, a New York Lutheran pastor and former CIA agent and Navy SEAL. Stephen recommends CDM International Strategies and Security, an organization filled with proficient individuals he has worked alongside. Readers know that a covert group has targeted the pope’s scholars, deeming them heretics. Father Pietro Filoni is the villains’ resident assassin, whose series of murders is far from over. As Stephen and CDM investigate the killings, the sinister, shadowy culprits hope to acquire information by getting someone close to the pope, even if it takes coercion. A power shift among the villains sparks even more murders, and Stephen will once again have to use his combat skills. Keating spotlights a multitude of new and returning characters in his latest novel. He aptly details players’ backstories and relationships, and though Stephen is once again an appealing hero, Filoni is this book’s standout character. He’s so meticulous and methodical in carrying out his assassinations that he’s an especially disquieting villain. He’s also the reason this installment is noticeably bloody despite being less action-oriented than preceding volumes. Nevertheless, there’s hefty suspense, particularly with readers knowing the baddies have a mole and that Filoni is exceptional at covering his tracks. And while it’s not a central theme in the narrative, the author further explores the pastor’s duality—a man of God who sometimes has no choice but to kill.
A riveting entry in a multivolume series that continues to deliver strong characters and suspense. (disclaimer, dedication, bibliography, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 377
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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