A welcome return to post-revolutionary Kyiv for another police procedural featuring fledgling investigator Samson Kolechko.
A novice investigator faces more crimes to solve in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.
This second novel in a series returns to Kyiv in 1919. Less dramatic and violent than its predecessor, The Silver Bone (2024), it portrays a still uncertain but maturing Samson Kolechko in the early days of his career as an improbable police investigator. This time, alongside defrocked priest Sergius Kholodny, he’s pursuing participants in the illegal trade of meat, a precious commodity in a city plagued by material deprivation, whose inhabitants subsist, at best, on pork fat and pies filled with animal intestines. Under constant pressure from his commander, Nayden, and shadowed by Abyazov, an emissary from the Cheka, the dreaded secret police, Samson pursues his investigation fitfully, guided mainly by information he receives from Moses Briskin, the suspected meat dealer who’s hauled from detention for periodic interrogations. A series of thefts from police offices also divert the investigators for a time. Samson finds himself in a deepening relationship with Nadezhda, employed by the Provincial Bureau of Statistics, who’s imperiled by her involvement in a census of railway workers. They seamlessly, and appealingly, make the transition from roommates to awkward romantic partners. Samson remains haunted by the memory of the Cossack attack that took his father’s life and cost him his right ear, retaining the severed body part in a tin of sweets in his flat. For all the bleakness of its characters’ lives, the novel has some lighter moments, like the training session that instructs Samson and Kholodny on the proper technique for blowing cigarette smoke into the faces of interrogation subjects. Though the stakes here are not as high as in its predecessor, Samson is a companionable protagonist who manages to seem both part of the nascent political system and at a slight remove from it, and this story’s conclusion lays the groundwork for future adventures in his grim, but intriguing, world.
A welcome return to post-revolutionary Kyiv for another police procedural featuring fledgling investigator Samson Kolechko.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780063352339
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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