A tense, unpredictable, character-driven thriller about a complicated evil stalking Boston.
A series of church fires in Boston leads a reporter to suspect more serious crimes plague the city in this novel.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Pierson’s life in Boston is quickly complicated in many ways as this tale commences. Dana is going to be the guardian of 17-year-old Mia for the school year, for one thing. While waiting to pick up Mia from the airport, Dana learns that her ex-husband, Drew, the father of her long-lost son, Joel, is back in Boston as well. And it isn’t long before Dana hears from her longtime journalist partner, Kip Connor, who calls her late one night from the scene of a fire at St. Barbara’s, a decommissioned Roman Catholic church. Dana quickly learns that St. Barbara’s is only the latest old Boston church to catch fire—St. Aloysius and St. Lawrence suffered the same fate. In all three cases, there were reports of a blond-haired “ghost” in the vicinity right before the blaze. This seems like more than a coincidence, and the investigation that follows distracts Dana from the progress of Mia’s school year and her ongoing infatuation with the reporter’s dreamboat young nephew, Zac. “His eyes were dark, and his smile, a little bit naughty, turned up ever so slightly in the corners in a sly way,” Mia enthuses at one point. “Showing beautiful sexy teeth. Could teeth be sexy?” Dana and Kip encounter some baffling conduct by Catholic officials in the course of their investigation—and strange behavior on the part of Fire Marshal Ryan Kelly, who shows a curious amount of interest in the particular details of the blazes (and whose young brother, Gabe, a victim of church-ignored sexual abuse, has angelic looks and long blond hair). Jones keeps these and a half-dozen other subplots spinning in the remarkably smooth and readable story. The narrative speeds along, largely propelled by dialogue, and the author skillfully raises intriguing questions about virtually every character, from steadfast Kip to the missing Joel.
A tense, unpredictable, character-driven thriller about a complicated evil stalking Boston.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 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.
