Author: Gary Braver
Publication: Oceanview Publishing (October 10, 2023)
Description: A 16-year-old exchange student accused of witchcraft— dark circumstances and sick rumors lead to her brutal death, a cover-up, and more murders two decades later
Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are charged with investigating a reported suicide of a Cambridge woman in her backyard. The death came as a shock— the woman was considered a pillar of her community and was well-liked by everyone. After further investigation, the hanging appears staged. Once Kirk and Mandy’ s suspicions are confirmed, they make a list of suspects.
Clues begin to connect the recent murder to the decades-old mysterious death of a beautiful 16-year-old Romany exchange student who perished when a treehouse she was sleeping in caught fire. The girl, Vadima Lupescu, had done “odd” things among her American peers that stirred up prejudices and suspicions, leading to her brutal death— and cover-up.
As Kirk and Mandy investigate the bizarre rumors— that Vadima had “gypsy powers” and put curses on those around her— they discover a cauldron of dark secrets. Will they uncover the true cause of this tangled web of deaths and horrors before it spirals out of control?
My Thoughts: RUMOR OF EVIL introduces Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing as they investigate the supposed suicide of a Cambridge woman who was a pillar of her community. This investigation leads to a death nineteen years earlier of a foreign exchange student named Vadima Lupescu.
As Lucian and Wing investigate, they find connections to what had been written off as a tragic accident that happened one Halloween night nineteen years earlier. The hanging victim, Sylvie Cox Thornton, was one of a group of friends present at the party that ended with the tragic death of Vadima. The more they look at the earlier death, the more they become certain that it was a murder and that someone is worried about that fact coming out.
I enjoyed this story. I especially liked that the character of Kirk Lucian was so well developed. He is a man pushing fifty who is dealing with the hit-and-run death of his fourteen-year-old daughter and the possible dissolution of his marriage because neither he nor his wife can deal with their loss. Lucian is sometimes depressed and suicidal but uses his work to keep himself grounded. He is also fighting to reconcile with his wife while she is off exploring new possibilities with the contractor who recently completed a reno project at their home.
I had a pretty good, and correct, idea of who the murderer was based on the flashbacks to the events of nineteen years earlier, but I still enjoyed the journey of Kirk and Mandy figuring out the crime.
Favorite Quote:
Favorite Quote:
It occurred to him that he had in their separation even suffered a language loss: a secret patois that they had developed over twenty years of marriage -- code words, nicknames, insider jokes, references, silly nothings, verbal shortcuts that didn't exist in the lingua franca that they used with others, that made no sense to anyone else but perfectly communicated to themselves. Theirs was a dialect rooted in shared history, shared memories, and a shared mind.I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
Sounds good and you basically had me at witchcraft.
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