The Havana Syndrome - Jeffrey James Higgins

Jeffrey James Higgins, the author of the Havana Syndrome, is described on his website as, “a retired supervisory special agent who writes suspense and thriller novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, and essays. He has wrestled a suicide bomber, fought the Taliban in combat, and chased terrorists across five continents.” I don’t know, but he seemed awfully relaxed about life when I took his class at this summer’s Cape Cod Writers Center conference. Maybe that’s his cover persona!

The Havana Syndrome is the first book in his Nathan Burke series. Nathan is assigned to investigate the Taliban and the Chinese Triad. He is busily involved in setting up a sting to stop a mysterious terrorist event and traveling to Santo Domingo with his daughter when his wife is struck down by the mysterious affliction dubbed the Havana Syndrome.

The Syndrome was an actual event that occurred in late 2016 when U.S. personnel and intelligence officers stationed in Havana reported strange sounds, pressure, and sudden health issues like dizziness and headaches. Although Nathan’s wife is having an affair with her supervisor in Santo Domingo, Nathan is extremely protective of her and is determined to discover the perpetrators. He essentially goes rogue, but still handles both his Islamic terrorist and the Syndrome investigations, which are not interconnected.

It helps to know that Higgins is an experienced agent because it provides substance to some of Agent Burkes activities. Havana Syndrome impacts did happen, and I have been curious about them. In fact, 60 Minutes did extensive reporting on the subject, making Russian connections and reporting on the discovery of a directed energy weapon in their March 2026 story. This book was published on June 17, 2025. Makes me wonder if Higgins had an inside track!

This is a readable page-turner thriller. There were elements of the story that stretched the credibility of time and distance as Agent Burke hops around the world to solve the crime. But was glad I had the author’s credibility to support my “willing suspension of disbelief,” as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said.

The Great Passion - James Runcie

The Great Passion by James Runcie is a historical fiction novel set in the early 1700s, centered on the creation by J.S. Bach of the Passion According to St. Matthew, BWV 244, which he presented at St. Thomas’s in Leipzig. The story is told through the eyes of a red-haired young man, Stefan Silbermann, who has been sent to the school at St. Thomas’s to distract him from the pain of losing his mother to an unnamed disease. Because he has red hair, he is picked on by the other boys. He runs away, is befriended by an oboe player, and eventually returned to the cantor - J.S. Bach. Stefan also has a beautiful soprano singing voice.

Runcie portrays the musical turmoil that surrounds the many members of the Bach family, the rivalries between musicians, visits from Telemann, Silbermann’s childhood crush on Bach’s daughter, the sudden devastating death of another daughter, and the horrific execution of a thief. All of this is interspersed with religious quotations in Latin and German, as though you are reading through a symphonic score. The story gradually builds to the presentation of the Passion, which occurs at the end of young Silbermann’s school term, after which he returns home to carry on the family business of building organs, reluctantly leaving behind his mentor and the love of his life.

Passion is reflected on many levels throughout this story, which portrays Bach as a complex family man whose head is bursting with music, all of which is driven by a passion for God. It is rare to read a book where work produced by a central character can be listened to while you read, almost as though he is sitting beside you.

The German and the Latin slow the story down, but the novel is a well-written portrayal of a remarkable musical genius.

Canary Girls

Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiavernini is the story of Lucy, April, and Helen and their friends who work in an arsenal in London during World War I making explosive shells. They are from different backgrounds and have different motivations to take the jobs, adding powdered TNT into the shells. They were known as munitionettes and the TNT made their skin turn yellow and took the color from their hair.

April is a 19-year-old former housemaid who follows her co-worker, Marjorie, to the city and the factory for higher wages and greater freedom.

Lucy is the wife of a star footballer who is compelled to join a fighting force.

Helen is the daughter of a German professor who falls in love and marries one of her father’s promising students, who turns out to be the son of a wealthy family that owns the arsenal.

Much of the book occurs when they are all together at the factory. They form a football team for recreation and end up playing in a regular munitions league. It seemed quite fitting to be reading this during the World Cup.

I found this book to be unnecessarily long. One of the issues of historical fiction is the difference between the temporal chain and the causal chain of events. As an author, it is easy to get swept away describing the historical events that naturally follow along, day after day in a temporal chain. The characters’ experience arc are a causal chain. When a character sits next to a beautiful woman in a bar and they end of having an affair, that is a link in their causal chain - this happens because of that. Leaning on the events in the temporal chain - Wednesday happens because it comes after Tuesday - does not change the character arcs which is the point of telling a story about people.

Another problem with following the temporal chain is maintaining the point of view. How does the protagonist know how the war is going? Too often in this book Chiaverini loses that point of view, diving into a magic narrator, that relates the history to the reader. I think about 100 of those pages could have been cut.

The Everest Enigma

An enigma is “a person, thing, or situation that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand,” and that certainly fits climbing Mount Everest - at least in my non-climber’s mind. Of course, there are a lot of things that people seem inspired to do, like rowing single-handed across the Atlantic or being a contestant on the TV show, Survivor that I don’t understand.

But that’s not the primary enigma that Jeannette de Beauvoir is writing about in her book, The Everest Enigma. Her protagonist, Abbie Bradford, a wealthy history major and non-climber, is certainly puzzled by the motivations of the dozens of wealthy people who seem driven to get to the top of the tallest mountain in the world at 29,031.7 feet. You get there, look around, take a picture, get out of the way of all the other people wanting to stand there, and then struggle to get back down and not die.

De Beauvoir weaves a murder mystery and several love stories into her novel, which she also ties into the Silk Road - the 4,000 mile, ancient network of Eurasian trade routes active from about 130 B.C.E. Since this is historical fiction, she also follows the story of George Mallory, who ostensibly was the first man to reach the top of Everest, neatly paralleling the story of Sir Edmund Hillary, who achieved the feat. Part of the ‘enigma’ is proving whether Mallory actually made it despite dying in the effort. None of the explains what is actually going on in de Beauvoir’s story which is the story of the development of a story which Winston Churchill might have called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” which he applied to the incomprehensible actions of the Soviet Union.

De Beauvoir’s writing is excellent, and I enjoyed this book. I will be interested to see what other Abbie Bradford mysteries she conjures up.

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry by Jackie French is the tale of an Australian woman, Agnes Glock, who wanted to be a doctor and went to Scotland to study. The story begins in Australia in 1924. The Great War wreaked havoc on the world, and remotely affected citizens didn’t like it. They did all they could to avoid seeing the injured and maimed, despite the sacrifices made.

One of the injured was Douglas Mulberry, who suffered through several horrific events in the war, including being buried under a pile of dead bodies. He was from a wealthy Australian family who now appears to be eager to bury him again under a label of insanity in order to acquire control of the family fortune. Douglas’s sister, Hortense Louise Victoria Mulberry or Mulberry Puddin’ does not want that to happen because she loves her brother, and from a personal point of view, her own income would be cut off by their uncle once he declared Douglas insane and gained control of the Mulberry fortune. Puddin’ convinces Agnes to marry Douglas, and she rescues him, marries him, and takes him back to Australia. Agnes does not easily fill the role of a wealthy society woman. She is too kind and thoughtful, so instead of becoming the Mrs. Mulberry society expects her to be, she builds her own version of the role.

Jackie French is an excellent writer. Her scenic and food descriptions are exceptional. There are a lot of unusual animals in Australia that do a lot of unusual things. French connects nature to the characters harmoniously.

The plot clearly shows Agnes struggling with her new role and her new resources, but the characters develop more effectively than the story itself. There is the ongoing conflict with her trying to settle into her role, but the sub-story drama rises and sets too quickly, with not quite enough color to fully develop.

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry is an interesting travelog of post-Great War Australia and a good read.

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is based on an interesting premise: the internal thoughts of a giant Pacific octopus called Marcellus who is held - more or less - in captivity in a West Coast aquarium. Marcellus is not only bright; he is wise, able to reason, solve puzzles, and understand the history of humans by reading their fingerprints and appreciating human nature.
After Marcellus introduces himself to the reader, the stories of two disparate people in different places begins - one an older woman, Tova Sullivan, who cleans and maintains the aquarium and a young man, Cameron Cassmore, in California who is fumbling with the direction of his life as a part-time musician and professional reprobate. Three interesting and fun storylines that seem impossible to bring together. And yet …
Cameron finds a photo and a class ring and concludes that it is a picture of his father, a rich real estate developer in Washington. He sets off to claim what he believes will be his inheritance.
There are several unlikely coincidences that make the story work, but the humor and original premise are enough to push the reader through what Coleridge called, “the willing suspension of disbelief”. Van Pelt leaves clues to how the pieces will all fit together, guided by the wisdom of Marcellus.
The tale is told in the present tense, which I usually find disturbing, but the style of the writing buries well enough to make it disappear and have the events feel more immediate. The telling also rocks back and forth between the various story lines which fits that structure well.
There are pleasant side notes that add color like Cameron’s lost luggage that travels internationally on its own, the priceless T-shirt that Tova uses to clean a kitchen, and the cat that wanders into her life. The story is enriched by some tragic elements, such as Tova's lost son and Cameron’s desperate search for his father.
It is a well-written first novel that adds light to a cruel world.
The movie version starring Sally Field is due out on Netflix early in 2026

The Phantom Tollbooth - Norman Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is a classic writer’s play on words and concepts, youth, time, and perception. And Jules Feiffer’s illustrations bring out the best.

Milo is a bored boy who lives a privileged life in a city. He has lots of toys and games and books, and it is too much trouble for him to do any of them. Wherever he is, he wants to be somewhere else.

But one day he comes home from school and finds a large surprise box in his room with a note that identifies it as a tollbooth - some assembly required. It comes with a map, coins for the toll, and signs to set up, warning him to slow down as he approaches the toll. And since he has nothing he would rather do, he gets in his little electric car, deposits his toll, and passes the booth driving magically into Expectations where he is greeted by the Whether Man. Milo drives on to meet an array of interesting characters where the logic of words conflicts with the logic of numbers, people begin their lives at the height they will end up reaching and grow down to the ground, and sunrises and sunsets are works of art. All these experiences teach Milo - and the reader - to look at life a little more carefully and with a little more pleasure.

It is an enjoyable story for anyone who enjoys thinking.

Churchill's Secret Messenger

Churchill’s Secret Messenger by Alan Hlad is the story of the life and experiences of Rose Teasdale, who begins the book as a typist in Room 60 of Winston Churchill’s underground Cabinet War Rooms in February 1941 on the 159th day of bombing Britain. She is a capable typist and fluent in both English and French, which she speaks like a native because of her French mother’s family. Her brother has been shot down in his Spitfire over the Channel. And one day while she is busy typing, a bomb totals her mother and father’s shop, killing both of them. Churchill sends Rose a personal note sympathizing for her losses.

Some days later, she is brought into Churchill’s private quarters to serve as a substitute interpreter when Churchill is negotiating with General De Gaulle and Commandant Martel. Recognizing her linguistic skills, Churchill has her sent to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Hlad inserts the second narrative point of view with a young Jewish man in Paris called Lazare Aron, who lives in restrained circumstances with his parents as the Nazis terrorize the once beautiful, creative city. Because of an accident, Lazare’s hand was crushed, so he wears a wooden prosthetic, which prevented him from being able to join the French army. He turns his hatred of the occupying army by joining forces with the French Resistance. Rose and Lazare meet and fall in love when she is parachuted into France.

They experienced horrible things that made me wish that the war would end so that the pain and suffering would stop. Hlad’s writing is skillful in inflicting that sort of empathetic anguish. There is a great deal of inner dialog, wondering, wishing, and hoping. And there is much that is repeated, which caused me to skip passages I had seen before.

It is a strong, well-written, and well-researched uncomfortable read.

Atomic City Girls - Janet Beard

Janet Beard’s The Atomic City Girls offers a poignant exploration of one of WWII’s lesser-known chapters: the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the young women—nicknamed “Calutron Girls”—who sat behind dials and meters, unaware they were helping build the atomic bomb. The novel follows four narrators—countryside newcomer June Walker, her ambitious roommate Cici, Jewish physicist Sam Cantor, and African‑American laborer Joe Brewer—whose personal trajectories intertwine amid wartime secrecy and moral ambiguity.

Beard skillfully sets the scene of a rapidly constructed community, structured by class, race, and gender hierarchies. Through Joe’s perspective, the novel addresses segregation, prison‑line housing, and under‑recognition, offering one of its strongest and most unsentimental narratives. Meanwhile, June’s arc—from naïve farm girl to someone confronting the weight of complicity—captures the emotional heart of the story. Her romance with Sam begins as escapism, but later becomes a complicated vehicle for truth and hurt, especially as he struggles with guilt and addiction.

That said, the structure is somewhat scattered and the characters underdeveloped. The action switches between stories and points of view too often to get invested in any line. The danger of revelation and punishment is dropped, and the ending wraps up all the stories neatly and artificially.

Despite its promise, the plot leans into soap‑opera dynamics and romance more than the industrial or ethical centrality implied by the title. Still, Beard’s inclusion of period photographs adds immediacy, even if some may find them distracting.

The Atomic City Girls is rich with potential—a historically grounded setting and morally resonant themes—yet it often settles for surface drama over depth. It’s a warm, approachable read, but those hoping for intricate character arcs or deeper insight into Oak Ridge’s secret bureaucracy may feel shortchanged.

Mr. Standfast - John Buchan

John Buchan is most famous for his novel The Thirty-nine Steps which has been adapted for film and television. Mr. Standfast follows the exploits of the same protagonist, Richard Hannay a Scottish engineer, general, and adventurer. He is serving as a general at the beginning of the book, but gets pulled away for a top-secret mission, taking on the undercover role of a pacifist in order to uncover a diabolical, shape-shifting spy. Hannay chases this elusive character all over Scotland and back down into England and finally ends up heading for Switzerland.

It is an elaborate and detailed chase - some of which is dramatic and some of which is slow moving. A number of elements of the tale are connected to previous events and previous characters making it challenging to follow along without taking notes. The story is linked closely to events in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 1678 Christian allegory. Mr. Standfast is the last pilgrim met by Christiana whom she finds kneeling on the ground and praying “in thanks for having been delivered from the temptation of Madam Bubble”. The Pilgrim’s Progress is used as a code book for passing information, hence the title of this novel.

The time frame of the novel is a bit indeterminate. It was published in 1919 but there is a conspicuous absence of Americans when Hannay returns to the front. Americans entered the war in April of 1917, but Hannay’s beleaguered battalion is relieved by French troops.

This book was appreciated in its time and is interesting from the standpoint of the machinations behind the battles that is far less common than portrayals of face-to-face battles. I didn’t find this book to live up to the promise of the Thirty-nine Steps.

Street - AD Metcalf

Street by A.D. Metcalfe is an extraordinary novel. It’s the story of 12 year-old Johnny Alvarez who runs away from his abusive home in Miami, gets on a bus, goes to New York, and thrives. Johnny is remarkably adept at survival, parking his few belongs in a tree, spending his first night in Central Park, and then establishing himself in a rundown building in Washington Heights. Johnny’s gang builds and gathers momentum as he makes use of his wits and his language skills.

He does have a problem, however. He was so badly abused by his brother in Miami that he periodically blacks out and loses control sort of like the Hulk. It is a gritty, emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, but it is also a a coming-to-terms story as Johnny struggles to get his internal monster under control.

This must have been a challenging book to write just from the standpoint of seeing the world through the eyes of a twelve-year old boy. People do rise to the challenge and behave beyond their maturity, but Johnny is exceptional. There is no youth in him or his world. What sets this novel apart is its psychological depth. Johnny’s internal struggles—particularly the trauma inflicted by his sadistic older brother—are portrayed with raw honesty. The narrative doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of adolescence, but it also offers moments of levity and camaraderie that make Johnny’s journey feel authentic and human 

Metcalfe blends gritty realism with emotional nuance, creating a story that is both harrowing and hopeful. The prose is sharp, the pacing brisk, and the characters vividly drawn. If you're drawn to stories of resilience, urban survival, and the complexities of youth, Street is a compelling and thought-provoking read.

The Rope - Nevada Barr

Published in 2012, The Rope is the 17th Anna Pigeon novel from Nevada Barr. It is the first Nevada Barr novel that I have read, it purports to be the beginning of the Anna Pigeon stories. “It all begins here”, it says on the cover. It’s an interesting beginning.

It's 1995. The story begins at a marina called ‘Dangling Rope’ at the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area with National Park Service personnel hanging around at the end of a work-day. Anna Pigeon is missing from the scene and the reason why she is missing is a mystery. She is mentioned as an odd woman wearing black and saying little.

Anna appears in Chapter 2 at the bottom of a naturally carved ‘solution hole’ in the rocks, naked and with no memory in her fuzz encrusted brain of how she got there, how long she’s been there, or exactly where ‘there’ is. Barr keeps Anna there longer than most readers would feel comfortable with as Anna struggles to figure out her situation and how to escape from it. She cleverly makes use of every option that the situation offers.

Gradually the reader is made aware of Anna’s backstory as Barr shifts the point of view in and out of Anna’s brain as well as the brains of other park employees.

The park employee characters described in the opening chapter are not consistent throughout the rest of the book. A number of traumatic and potentially deadly episodes are strung together to keep the story moving. Barr does a wonderful job of describing the incredible landscapes around Lake Powell and the mysteries of the history of the land that existed before it was all flooded by the creation of the Glen Canyon Dam.

The Rope is a skillful and entertaining tale in the spirit of Paul Doiron and William Kent Krueger.

James - Percival Everett

The foundation of this book derives from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Jim was a slave associated with both Tom and Huckleberry Finn. This book portrays Jim’s life from his point of view - a runaway slave seeking for a way to find his freedom around 1861.

The story begins with Jim chopping wood, stashing a bit away under his mistress’s porch to warm his family’s cabin. He learns that his mistress intends to see him down the river, taking him away from his family. Jim escapes by swimming to a nearby island and his life unravels from there. The book consists of a series of events as Jim moves down and back up the river, from community to community. Everett constructs each event to show the inhumanity showered upon slaves as well as the attitude of the slave toward their ignorant white masters from the slaves use of slave language to having a black man wear black face to sing in a minstrel show.

The story thrives on the irony of the events and situations. The lack of humanity is more than disturbing. A slave is lynched for stealing the stub of a pencil when slaves were not expected to read or write. As Jim transforms to James, his relationship with Huckleberry is clarified.

It is a small world, but some of the interactions seemed contrived - unreal twists of fate. But the book is certainly well written and provides a unique perspective on life.

Code of Arms - Jack Slater

This book confused me. In the early pages, I was pretty sure that it was AI generated. If there is any official way to determine if that is true, I don’t know what it is. Whatever system was used, no obvious typos jumped out at me. That in itself may be indicative of the hand of AI. Interestingly, Amazon lists the publisher as the date of publication.

This is a long shoot-em-up novel. There is a mysterious woman who is subjected to a mysterious beginning in the prologue of the book. When Gideon Ryker appears, he is fighting from his life even though he doesn’t remember who is or how he got into a French Foreign Legion retirement community. It turns out that there is a secret massive conspiracy organization (who Slater claims he based on the people behind Jeffrey Epstein) who wants desperately to silence Ryker – although it wasn’t clear to me why they want to do that. There isn’t much depth to the characters, but there is a lot of bloodshed. Slater seems to have a thorough knowledge of weaponry.

It is written well enough that I read it through. He does a decent job of explaining how Ryker gets from point A to point B, picking up money and clothing and weapons as he goes. And Ryker does seem to have a heart, taking pity on an old man who’s car he steals.

This sort of tale would appeal to readers of Lee Child stories, but Jack Reacher has a greater depth of character than Gideon Ryker.

The Disappeared - C.J. Box

Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. Like a good protagonist, life isn’t all ‘skittles and beer’ for him. But this book doesn’t begin with Joe Pickett. It begins in the small burg of Encampment, Wyoming where nasty things seem to be going on around the sawmill sawdust burner. It begins with the story of Wylie Frye who is tending to the burner, feeding it sawdust with a bucket loader and checking out messages on his cell phone. The story begins when a truck hits a dog and old Carol Schmidt catches the license plate.

When Joe Pickett enters the story he is waiting for the new governor’s Citation jet at the Saddlestring Municipal Airport. He is met by the governor’s manager who sends him off in a completely unexpected direction to find a missing British PR mogul who has disappeared without a trace. And from there the story marches on through the blinding snow of a Wyoming winter.

There are twenty-six books in the Joe Pickett series and this one was number twenty, published in 2018. Box pushes them out at a rate of one per year. I like the fact that this book stands on its own. Without knowing the details, it makes sense that the story is connected to the preceding Joe Pickett stories, but you don’t have to read them to get to this one.

Joe is a likeable, comfortable, clean living protagonist. He leaves his ugly work to his buddy Nate Romanowski who isn’t adverse to using a frozen trout as a club. Box portrays his characters smoothly and cleanly and the frigid air of the Wyoming winter is abundantly clear and very cold. He reflects the character of his villain through the eyes of a needy side-kick so there isn’t a great deal of depth to him.

But that’s not what the story is about. The story is about Joe Pickett and his family, a dedicated public servant getting his job done despite the barriers of the bureaucracy and the world. And in this book, his job is finding the missing woman. And the reader knows from the beginning that he won’t stop until he gets that done.

The Black Wolf - Samantha Raymer

The Legend of Moonglade - Book One

In a world where everyone has a living spirit animal to accompany them through their lives and bestow them with special powers, superstition prohibits association with just one animal: a black wolf. Zuri, the protagonist of this tale, is a member of the Wolf Clan and when it comes time for a wolf to select her, a black wolf pup chooses her. And so the clan condemns her to growing up as an outcast.

The world of Akaidia has been divided into clans: Wolf Clan, Serpent Clan, Panther Clan, and Hawk Clan. After the Choosing, the black wolf is expelled from the clan and Zuri is shunned, chosen only for the most menial of tasks. But one day outside of the camp, when Zuri is fourteen, the black wolf finds her and they communicate telepathically. When the clan discovers this relationship, she is chased out to the edge of the cliff that hangs over the ocean. Zuri has to choose whether to stay where she is to be killed by the clan or leap off the cliff to what seems like certain death.

Ms. Raymer handles such cliff hangers with skill. She has created the world that has self-destructed under the influence of an evil power that has divided all the people, separated them into warring clans, and spread them apart while the source of the ultimate evil is trapped but growing ever stronger. Ms. Raymer has populated the world with wise teenagers who use their knowledge and the power of their animals to thrive together despite the blindness of the majority of adults.

This is the first novel for this talented thirteen-year-old author. It is an extraordinary start to what promises to be an exceptional artistic ride. It expresses mature writing skills generated from extensive reading, immersion in the world of fantastic tales, determination, and joy in the journey.

In The Woods - Tana French

Tana French published this book in 2007 as the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It appears to be her first published novel. I have found that writing is often strange in first novels, so having been introduced to her through The Searcher which she published in 2020, I wanted to see how she had begun. And this was quite a beginning.

French wrote the book in the first person voice of the male narrator, who is a Dublin murder detective whose name varies between Rob Ryan and Adam Ryan. He tells the reader, “What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this - two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”

There are two primary story lines: the first is of three young people playing in the summer sun who take off into the woods next to their housing development outside of Dublin, as they have done many times before. Only this time two of them disappear, and the third one (who turns out to be Adam Ryan) is found clutching a tree with someone else’s blood in his shoes. The second story line is Rob (Adam) returning to the housing development ten years later to investigate the murder of a young girl who is found on top of an ancient sacrificial stone. A highway is about to be built through the ancient site and some people don’t want that to happen.

There are lots of threads of emotional entanglements and distress. Adam has changed his name to Rob in order to avoid curious questions about the events ten years earlier.

Tana French’s writing is as rich as a death-by-chocolate cake. The psychological aspects of this book are disturbing, and the pace seemed slow as lead after lead came to a dead end. But by the time I finished the book, I understood it had to be written the way it was written in order to build the troubled natures of the characters. It clearly fits into the police mystery/psychological genres, and I will keep it on my reference shelf just for the way French handles the suspect interviews.

I will also keep it on my reference shelf for the truly most evil character I have ever met in a work of fiction. Another reviewer compared this book to Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which had also occurred to me as I was reading it. I wonder if Tana French had to turn away from that character who seems a bit thinly developed compared to others in the novel. To truly develop that character would have meant getting inside it and truly seeing the world through its eyes. (I am avoiding the defining the gender of the character to avoid spoiling the story.)

Getting inside the head of a truly evil character is scary as hell.

This is not a quick read, but this is another five star novel from Tana French.