

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. 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. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S.

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. 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. 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. 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. Only the characters and their cumbersome individual interactions are muffled by all the grade-A trappings.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī 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. The central conceit is audacious Mycroft’s sense of moral outrage is nicely reflective of the era the historical detail is solid and the period decorum is well-maintained throughout. Even more disturbingly, every new development in the adventure, which eventually leads the visitors to the Sacred Order of the Harmonious Fists, seems to point unerringly to well-placed government functionaries and protectors and implicate someone close to Mycroft himself as a conspirator. Booking passage aboard the Sultana for Trinidad, the two men swiftly find themselves immersed in an unholy scheme by a ring of freelance entrepreneurs to revive a horror recently and traumatically abolished in the Americas. His plans are knocked sideways by the hushed news from his Trinidadian friend and associate Cyrus Douglas that a lougarou, as the islanders call werewolves, has been draining the blood of young children and causing mass disappearances of their elders. Peter, his older brother, a little wet behind the ears at 23, serves as secretary to Edward Cardwell, the Secretary of State for War, and looks forward to his marriage to Georgiana Sutton, a perfect English rose born in Port of Spain. That’s right: nonpareil basketball player Abdul-Jabbar, who’s already written memoirs, nonfiction titles, and children’s books ( Stealing the Game, 2015, etc.), partners with screenwriter Waterhouse to introduce a prequel to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother.īack in 1870, when Sherlock is still an indifferent student at the Royal College of St.
