Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The crimes under investigation in Preston and Child's underwhelming 18th thriller featuring FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast (after 2018's City of Endless Night) are tame by the bestselling authors' usual standard. Walter Pickett, an FBI assistant director recently assigned to the New York City field office, is determined to keep maverick Pendergast under his control, unlike his predecessors, and assigns him a partner, Special Agent Coldmoon . Coldmoon is to keep a close eye on him as the two investigators head to Miami Beach, where a human heart has been left on the grave of Elise Baxter, who strangled herself with a bedsheet in Maine 11 years earlier. A note signed Mister Brokenhearts and quoting T.S. Eliot was left along with the freshly harvested organ. Pendergast insists that the choice of grave was an intentional one, and that circumstances of the old suicide be reexamined, even as Mister Brokenhearts strikes again. The X-Files pilot-like plot of a younger agent assigned to spy on a brilliant but eccentric colleague is old hat, and Pendergast himself doesn't appear to best advantage in an outing that shows the series' age. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The 18th installment in the Pendergast series by Preston and Child (City of Endless Night, 2018, etc.) gives the hero a partner in the hunt for a strange killer.A woman walks a dog in a Miami Beach cemetery, and her dog finds a human heart. Soon more hearts turn up at the gravesites of women thought to have committed suicide a decade before. The FBI assigns agents Pendergast and Coldmoon to work with the Miami PD on the case. Pendergast is highly successful in closing cases on his own but "was about as rogue as they came," and suspects tend not to survive his investigations. Agent Coldmoon's secret assignment is to keep a close eye on his partner, "a bomb waiting to go off," who tends to do something "out of left field, or of questionable ethics, or even specifically against orders." The current victims are women whose throats have been slit and breastbones split open to remove their hearts, all in quick and expert fashion. The killer leaves notes at the graves, signed "Mister Brokenhearts." This kind of weirdness is in Pendergast's wheelhouse, as he's an odd sort himself, quite outside the FBI culture. Rather like Sherlock Holmes, he sees patterns that others miss. He's tall, gaunt, dresses like an undertaker, and always seems to have more money than the average FBI agent. Both men are great charactersColdmoon curses in Lakota and prefers "tarry black" coffee that Pendergast likens to "poison sumac" and "battery acid." They wonder about the earlier deaths and whether the women had really hanged themselves. For answers they require exhumations, new autopsies, and a medical examiner's close examinations of the hyoid bones. Meanwhile the deeply troubled killer ponders his next action, which he hopes will one day wipe away his pain and guilt and bring atonement. Alligators, bullets, and a sinkhole contribute to a nerve-wracking finish.Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
