A complex, cerebral mystery with a plethora of suspects that demands out-of-the-box thinking and help from a heroic mule.
Solving the murder of the most hated man in Absaroka County, Wyoming, is no easy case for Sheriff Walt Longmire.
Wealthy landowner Pepper McKay is found dead in a trout stream on his O-Kay Ranch. Did he slip and hit his head on a rock, or was he murdered? Pepper was an indifferent parent, an alcoholic, a womanizer, and a rapist. He had three sons from his marriage—David, Ian, and Alan, who were all at the ranch for a family meeting the night before Pepper’s body was found—and another, Manx Henenoka, the product of an affair with a Shoshone cook who worked at the ranch. They all hated Pepper to varying degrees. Manx’s story is the best example of Johnson’s deep dives into characterization. Different in every way from his half brothers, he lives at the ranch, where he was raised by foreman Gary Lyman and his wife, Lynn, after his mother died, and expects nothing of Pepper. Manx wins Walt’s admiration for his blunt answers to questions and his skill training a mule named Borax. Two sets of boot prints at the scene hint at murder, delighting Walt’s undersheriff and fiancée, Victoria Moretti. Even Walt has a motive for the crime: Years ago, Pepper tried to rape his now late-wife. In addition to the murder case, there are several dangers: Wildfires threaten the ranch, and Walt is stuck acting as parole officer for Maxim Sidorov, an erudite Russian spy who once tried to kill him. Both Pepper and David were once involved with a woman named Paetra Agirra, whose hot-tempered uncle has already killed three men. Unlike the average lawman, Walt has a philosophical bent, lives by his own code, and reads voraciously. But it’s Maxim who points out the similarities between Pepper’s family and The Brothers Karamazov that could crack the case.
A complex, cerebral mystery with a plethora of suspects that demands out-of-the-box thinking and help from a heroic mule.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9780593830734
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2026 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.
