Back to the grassy knoll in this surprisingly engaging thriller.
At great personal risk, disgraced Secret Service agent Joe Mingus and Jesuit history professor Juan Verdugo follow encrypted clues to find long-hidden truths about the JFK assassination—and solve another murder.
First Verdugo and then Mingus receive the clues from Mingus’ former girlfriend, Olivia Heller, a National Archives researcher, after someone kills her over her discovery of materials proving Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Her murderer is a crazed Cuban exile working for billionaire Mark Cristanti, a primary contributor to the presidential campaign of right-winger Jonathon Connor. For Cristanti, Kennedy’s killing was a “course correction” made necessary by JFK’s reneging on his promise to take down the USSR rather than ease tensions: “Were it not for our action in Dealey Plaza, the USSR would still exist to this day.” For the support of Cristanti’s secret extremist faction, the Movement, Connor promises to eradicate the progressive cause and bring about the “next” theocratic America. Mingus, reduced to working as a bouncer at a Baltimore strip club following 20 months in prison on a felony conviction, is determined to avenge Olivia’s killing. A succession of Jeopardy!-like clues lead him and the devout but increasingly game Verdugo to Oswald’s house in Texas, where killer bees protect a cache of secrets behind the walls, and New Orleans, home of D.A. Jim Garrison, whose investigation of the assassination led him to believe the CIA and the Mafia were involved. Borrowing from puzzle master Dan Brown, Hauty concocts an entertaining plot with a great payoff. Naming the protagonist Mingus, after the towering jazz legend, is a bit distracting and even off-putting; another character is named after country great Wanda Jackson. But he overcomes that with his ability to make this seemingly exhausted piece of history fresh.
Back to the grassy knoll in this surprisingly engaging thriller.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781668084090
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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