» Click here to read Roberta O'Hara's review.

Review #1 by L. Dean Murphy

Following Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver’s 2021 collaboration, CHOOSE ME, and Braver’s stand-alone novel, TUNNEL VISION, flawed Massachusetts detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing investigate the apparent hanging suicide of 36-year-old Sylvie Thornton on the third anniversary of her son’s death. Sylvie and her husband had divorced after Devon died of cancer. She had been depressed, and her other son chose to live with his dad. With no sign of a struggle, marks on Sylvie’s shoes and other evidence suggest murder. She also had attempted to blackmail her ex-husband. Kirk somewhat identifies with Sylvie: His teen daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver, an unsolvable cold case.

"RUMOR OF EVIL is an iconic police procedural. Readers want to see Kirk and Mandy solve more cases. Soon! Please, Mr. Braver?"

Deft 19-year-old flashbacks seamlessly bring readers up to speed in this fast-paced intrigue. Back then, Slovakian exchange student Vadima Lupescu was ostracized by cliquish white-bread peers Morgan, Krista, Riley and Sylvie, in the shadows of Harvard’s Ruskinian Gothic architecture. Vadima was of Romany descent, deemed a gypsy raised on a pig farm. She wanted to fit in with her peers, but a tinted complexion and reading palms branded her as a witch. Grayson “Gee Gee” Gallagher “was the biggest Bible student among us, quoting heavy-duty passages all the time.” Regarding Vadima, he cites Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Moreover, Cambridge is only 24 miles from Salem, where the witch trials began in 1692.

But there are witches. The Bard wrote “Song of the Witches”: Double, double toil and trouble/Fire burn and caldron bubble. With a score of suspects, the two detectives find themselves in a boiling cauldron of double toil and trouble --- both personal and professional.

This phenomenal thriller features troubled, almost-divorced Kirk Lucian as the senior partner with 29 years under a badge. He mulls, “[W]hat monstrous things humans do to humans --- bodies blown in half by shotguns over a drug deal gone wrong.” He’s paired with tyro detective Mandy Wing. Both cops carry as much baggage as a major airline. Kirk struggles daily with a pending divorce and the death of his daughter. Mandy was born to a 15-year-old who had been raped. She wants to make a difference by bringing bad guys to justice. “Kirk was impressed with her determination in what was traditionally a man’s arena.” Both are “on a murder investigation that cares not to wait.”

RUMOR OF EVIL is an iconic police procedural. Readers want to see Kirk and Mandy solve more cases. Soon! Please, Mr. Braver?
 

Review #2 by Roberta O’Hara

I have said it before, and I will say it again: I am a huge fan of Gary Braver. Also not a secret: Under his real name, Gary Goshgarian, he introduced me to science fiction, thrillers and horror stories, a task my older brother had tried unsuccessfully for years to accomplish. But in his class as a graduate student at Northeastern University, I devoured the greats and experienced how good storytelling could set the pulse racing and the imagination soaring. 

For 20 years, I have been reviewing Braver’s mastery of storytelling. He truly knows how to set the pulse racing and the imagination soaring. He has never disappointed, and RUMOR OF EVIL is right up there with ELIXIR, GRAY MATTER, FLASHBACK and CHOOSE ME (written with Tess Gerritsen) in terms of meeting expectations of thrilling and well-written novels.

"'Page-turner' is an overused phrase for books, but then some really do rise to that description. RUMOR OF EVIL undoubtedly is one of those page-turners. The race to the end throws in a few surprises and a result you might not see coming at a breathtaking pace."

Braver’s strength in his pieces has always been in tackling the big life questions with which we all struggle. RUMOR OF EVIL explores relationships, healthy or not; unlocks secrets that have long been buried away; seeks justice where it had not been found before; and looks closely at the effects of gossip and bullying, even 20-year-old rumors. This is all wrapped up in a mystery that will keep you guessing until the taut conclusion.

Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and surrounding towns (I would have been disappointed if it wasn’t somewhere near Beantown), two detectives, Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing, are called to the scene of a death. The victim is Sylvie Thornton, a quiet but well-liked sort. Right from the start, they suspect something is off about the hanging, and the question “suicide or murder?” hangs in the air, but not for long. Kirk and Mandy start to see the discrepancies at the home and in conversations with those who knew Sylvie, and they realize they are confronting a homicide.

Braver deftly weaves the story of Sylvie’s killing with the cold-case death of 16-year-old Vadima Lupescu. Vadima, an exchange student, lived with Morgan Bolt, who turns out to be Sylvie’s best friend. A fire in a treehouse kills Vadima 20 years before Sylvie’s death. Still unsolved, Vadima’s death was never conclusively labelled an accident or a homicide, and dark stories of witchcraft or gypsy powers circulated by the teens who knew Vadima survive her demise.

As the cold case and the new case begin to merge, Braver teases his audience with enough possible killers to keep us all guessing. His characters, as always, are well drawn out, with some who are truly despicable. Kirk and Mandy shine in their teamwork and their delving into the network of lives and lies that have resulted in Sylvie’s death, and Vadima’s before her. Navigating his own pain and loss, Kirk can handle that of others and advise his young partner as she finds her way around and through an investigation.

“Page-turner” is an overused phrase for books, but then some really do rise to that description. RUMOR OF EVIL undoubtedly is one of those page-turners. The race to the end throws in a few surprises and a result you might not see coming at a breathtaking pace. And like his good friend, Robert B. Parker, Braver has created a character in Kirk who could endure in future mysteries. He’s a flawed but likable human being who knows what he’s doing to solve a murder or two. Rumor has it that we may see Kirk again, just as Parker gave us Spencer repeatedly. If the cases are as good as this one, bring them on.