Publisher's Weekly Review
In Meyer's enjoyable if slight work, the sixth outing for all-too-human Capt. Benny Griessel of South Africa's Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (after 2015's Icarus), a woman's bleached and nude corpse turns up outside Cape Town. No clothing or possessions were nearby, and the pathologist determines that she died elsewhere, killed by a blow to the back of her head. Griessel catches a break when a hotel concierge recognizes the dead woman as Alicia Lewis, an American who was living in London. Further digging reveals that Lewis was a case manager for the Art Loss Register, a firm that maintained "the largest private database of lost and stolen art in the world," and which searched for missing art. History professor Marius Wilke, who met Lewis when she came to South Africa, informs Griessel that she was in search of a painting, possibly worth $100 million, by one of Rembrandt's protégés. Strong characterizations, even of secondary characters, compensate for a whodunit plot that isn't Meyer's best. Hopefully, he'll return to form next time. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A dead woman stripped naked and draped over a stone wall poses vexing problems for Capt. Benny Griessel and Capt. Vaughn Cupido, of Cape Town's Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (Icarus, 2015, etc.).Even before it's identified, the corpse, bashed to death elsewhere and washed thoroughly with bleach, rings alarm bells for Griessel, whose mind is focused less on his job than on the 22,000 rand he'll have to borrow if he's to buy a proper (though pawned and possibly stolen) engagement ring for former singing star Alexa Barnard, who's plotting a comeback despite the alcoholism she shares with Griessel. Once it becomes known that the victim was Alicia Lewis, an American visitor who took a sabbatical from her job with a London art-recovery company to come to South Africa and was murdered in record time after her arrival, the police are under intense pressure to close the case. Why was the foreign visitor so interested in getting directions to the nondescript town of Villiersdorp? What was she doing that got her killed so quickly after her arrival? And why, in the name of self-preservation and common decency, didn't her killer take more care to conceal her body instead of displaying it so brazenly that it was immediately spotted by a minibus carrying a dozen horrified workers to jobs in the city? Before these questions are answered, they'll lead to even more questions about a painting that's been lost for 350 years and a plot that brings the respectable Alicia Lewis into imprudently close contact with some truly shady characters.Though it's light on the critical analysis of race relations that helped make Meyer's earlier Cape Town mysteries hefty in every sense of the word, this gemlike novella is just the thing for a one-sitting read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A priceless work of art is at the heart of Meyer's latest thriller. When the naked, bleach-doused body of a woman found outside Cape Town turns out to be an American, Alicia Lewis, the case goes to the elite investigative unit called the Hawks, specifically to Captain Benny Griessel and his colleague Vaughn Cupido. Based on early evidence, Cupido has a theory about the murder, but when further investigation reveals that Lewis was one of the world's leading experts on Dutch Masters painters and experienced at recovering lost and stolen art, the case takes on a new dimension. It's possible that a near-mythical (fictional) painting called The Woman in the Blue Cloak, by Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt's star pupil, who died in an explosion in Delft in 1654, actually exists and is in South Africa, thus explaining Lewis' reason for being in the country. Along the way, Cupido bemoans gaining weight and questions his partner's desire to get married, while Griessel worries about how to pay for a suitable engagement ring. This novella-length tale is a worthy addition to the Benny Griessel series.--Michele Leber Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Pavone strikes a somber note here, observing that Paris hasn't been the same since the carnage at Charlie Hebdo in 2015. "There's a general foreboding in the air," he explains. "There is no such thing as safety for anyone, anywhere. Not anymore." For Kate, the new sign of the times is the sight of armored personnel carriers rolling down the ChampsÉlysées. The novel's carefully layered plot takes readers from the offices of a multinational company, where a master of industry is planning a dicey corporate merger, to a filthy alley where one hired killer confronts another. But at the heart of the story is the domestic drama playing out between Kate and Dexter. Distracted by worries about losing her job, Kate fails to notice her husband's increasingly reckless activities in the stock market. For his part, Dexter has been lying to Kate about how deeply he's gone into the market and where his investment money came from. Both characters are so realistically drawn that their quarrels sound unscripted. But Pavone takes great pains with all his characters, from the stuffed-shirt C.E.O. who's so full of himself that he doesn't realize he's been kidnapped to the unhappy suicide bomber who volunteered for a mission but didn't understand it would involve blowing himself up. ISAIAH COLERIDGE, an intimidating presence in Laird Barron's BLACK MOUNTAIN (Putnam, $26), used to be a hit man for the mob. ("Got dirty laundry? Call in Isaiah Coleridge. He gets the tough stains out.") Just don't inquire about the number of assassinations he notched up in his killing days. ("Asking a professional how many people he's dusted is discourteous.") Nowadays, Coleridge still works for the mob, but as a fully licensed private eye operating out of a pretty hamlet in the Hudson Valley. His old associates call on Coleridge when one of their independent contractors is found, minus his head and hands, floating in a reservoir. Even the Mafia capos blanch at that, so they task the P.I. with finding and punishing the "animals" responsible. That suits Coleridge, a big bruiser who likes nothing better than a good fight: "Assassination doesn't require agility, stamina or black belt reflexes. It requires viciousness." THE TITLE OF Kaite Welsh's new novel makes it sound like a bodice-ripper. But the unquiet HEART (Pegasus, $25.95) IS actually a nicely constructed historical mystery about the unorthodox sleuthing of a young woman who's studying to be a doctor at the University of Edinburgh. Assuming that Sarah Gilchrist survives the grueling curriculum, a medical career still seems improbable. In the blunt words of her anatomy professor, "I find it hard to believe that your future husband, infatuated as I'm sure he is, will ever let you practice medicine." But Victorian heroines are made of stern stuff. Although Sarah causes a scandal by assisting that same anatomy professor in the dissection of a cadaver without a chaperone present, she uses both her medical knowledge and her detection skills to try to save her fiance from being hanged for a double murder. IS IT O.K. to call a murder mystery "lovely"? That's the word that comes to mind for the woman in THE BLUE CLOAK (Atlantic Monthly, $22), a short but quite beautifully told story about two women by the South African author Deon Meyer. The first woman was killed with a blow to the head, washed in bleach and left naked on a stone wall near a busy highway. That's the woman who concerns Meyer's self-effacing Afrikaans cop, Capt. Benny Griessel, and his colleague Vaughn Cupido. Out of pure kindness, 13 Xhosa women stand watch over her body until the police arrive. "We can't leave her like this, all on her own!" The second woman, visibly pregnant, looks out from a painting by Carel Fabritius, a Dutch master who executed the work as a present for Rembrandt, his teacher and mentor. That woman has been missing since the painting disappeared from Delft in 1654, and her whereabouts holds the key to the first woman's death. The novel, as translated from the Afrikaans by K.L. Seegers, is quietly moving. But is it coldhearted to say the woman in the painting, Rembrandt's pregnant mistress, seems more alive than that naked woman on the wall ever was? MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.