Review_FICTION
46 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ OCTOBER 14, 2019
Review_FICTION
museum. A flabby middle section slows
the action, but this thriller deserves high
marks for the captivating tone of the
writing and attention to historical detail
about a prison that served as a key link in
the gulag chain. Readers will be curious
to see what May does next. Agent: Mitchell
Waters, Brandt & Hochman. (Jan.)Time Warp
Brian Pinkerton. Mystique, $15.99 trade paper
(258p) ISBN 978-1-950565-31-3
A deranged man builds a nonfunctional
time machine in this half-baked psycholog-
ical thriller from Pinkerton (The Gemini
Experiment). Danny DeCastro has fallen
into a depression after two divorces, an
estrangement from his son, and the death
of his brother. When Danny receives a
windfall from his dad’s business, he decides
to rewrite his life by building a time
machine. Readers expecting a time travel
element, however, will be disappointed by
the early reveal that the machine’s a fake.
Danny actually constructs stage sets of
important places in his life, writes correc-
tive scripts of painful moments, and hires
actors to reenact his altered life. He drags
his high school crush, Lisetta, into this
“role-playing therapy” and convinces her
to rekindle their romance. When Lisetta’s
husband, Martin, finds out about their
affair, she fatally stabs him. Consumed by
guilt, Lisetta leaves Danny, and his already
shaky grip on reality fractures completely.
Pinkerton’s psychological portrait of an
unstable and unreliable narrator is well
done, but there’s very little suspense in the
story and the ending lacks twists. This fails
to deliver the chills readers will crave. (Jan.)★ When Old Midnight Comes
Along: An Amos Walker Mystery
Loren D. Estleman. Forge, $26.99 (272p)
ISBN 978-1-2501-9717-7
At the start of Edgar-finalist Estleman’s
stellar 28th Amos Walker mystery (after
2018’s Black and White Ball), the Detroit
PI is retained by Francis X. Lawes, a local
government official in charge of insuring
procurement integrity, to find out what
happened to his PR consultant wife, Paula.
After Paula went missing six years earlier,
her car was found abandoned in a bad
neighborhood. She’s widely believed to
have been murdered, but Lawes, who’s
looking to remarry, is hoping for conclusivewoman from a tumultuous period of
American history. (Self-published.)Mystery/Thriller
The Body Outside the Kremlin
James L. May. Delphinium, $28 (416p)
ISBN 978-1-883285-84-5
The discovery of a body propels May’s
richly evocative, if flawed, first novel. One
morning in 1926, the deceased, Gennady
Antonov, a prisoner in a Soviet detention
camp located on a desolate island in the
White Sea, is found floating in the icy
waters off the island. The authorities choose
another prisoner, Tolya Bogomolov, a
20-year-old mathematician serving a
three-year term “for reactionary political
association,” to assist in the investigation.
What follows is a gripping, if lumbering,
look at the desperation and grimness of
prison life under early Chekist rule.
Bogomolov discovers that Antonov, who
worked in the museum formerly occupied
by monks on the island, was tied to several
suspicious recent events: the theft of gold
leaf, rumors of an escape plot, and the dis-
appearance of 38 religious icons from theElizabeth “Lizzie” McCourt Doe heads to
Colorado in 1878 from Oshkosh, Wis., to
prospect for gold in her first husband’s
family mine. After he abandons her, leaving
her penniless and pregnant, Lizzie divorces
him and supports herself as a tailor in a
haberdashery. Her beauty, enhanced by
large doelike eyes, earns her the nickname
Baby Doe and the adoration of U.S. senator
and mining magnate “Silver King” Horace
Tabor, who is twice her age. Their pas-
sionate love affair, begun while he was still
married, sustains them as they weather
scandal, financial collapse, and Horace’s
political ruin. During their marriage,
Baby Doe and Horace are civic-minded
Denver philanthropists, providing for the
impoverished and building a hotel and
opera house, but they have their share of
sorrows: suffering slander and social
ostracism, her family’s estrangement after
her divorce, and his friend’s embezzlement.
Rosenberg embellishes with vivid historical
markers—Colorado’s mineral rush, the
Hop Alley Riots targeting Chinese immi-
grants, and Horace’s bills for conservation,
miner pensions, and Chinese rights.
Readers will be drawn in by Baby Doe and
leave with a distinct picture of a formidable★ Abigail
Magda Szabó, trans. from Hungarian by Len Rix. New York Review Books,
$16.95 trade paper (360p) ISBN 978-1-68137-403-1T
his infectious coming-of-age novel from Szabó
(1917–2007), released in 1970 and translated into
English for the first time, is a rollicking delight. Gina
Vitay, the headstrong, spoiled lead, is reminiscent of
Jane Austen’s Emma. It is 1943 in Hungary and Gina’s
father, a general, sends her to the Matula Institute, a
secluded, Calvinist boarding school for girls. Gina is
forced to cut her hair, give away her possessions, and
conceal her draconian life at school from her father.
After Gina reveals to her teachers a strange, secret
school tradition and ruins it, her classmates, all wonderfully rendered, ignore her.
Gina resolves to escape, but then her father tells her that Germany is going to win
the war, and Gina can’t return home. In desperation, she turns to Abigail, a myste-
rious statue that grants students’ wishes. The teachers—handsome Péter Kalmár,
sentimental König, good-hearted Susanna—are a strong supporting troupe.
Readers will thrill as Gina navigates tangled situations—especially when kidnappers
hoping to manipulate Gina’s father into surrendering arrive at the Matula Institute’s
door. Szabó pairs the psychological insights reader will recognize from her novel
The Door with action more akin to Harry Potter. Gina is one of Szabó‘s finest creations,
and this work should continue to enhance her reputation in the U.S. (Jan.)