Publisher's Weekly Review
Johnson's middling third mystery set in New Zealand and featuring American Alexa Glock (after 2020's The Bones Remember) finds Alexa, a dental forensics specialist, apprehensive about an upcoming backpacking trip on the South Island's Milford Track with her grouchy younger brother, Charlie. Alexa hopes to reconnect with Charlie, of whom she's seen little since they were kids. But soon after Charlie arrives from North Carolina, Alexa decides she must first examine nine skeletons, probably native Maoris, unearthed by a bulldozer during highway construction near Wellington, despite a Maori warning not to disturb human bones. No surprise, Charlie resents Alexa's dedication to her work. During the trek, after a fellow hiker goes missing and is later found dead, Alexa calls in all-business Bruce Horne, an Auckland detective inspector and potential romantic interest, for backup. The gorgeous scenery makes up only in part for shallow characterizations and motivations and often clumsily inserted red herrings. The real star here is New Zealand's Milford Track. Armchair travelers will best appreciate this one. Agent: Natalie Lakosil, Bradford Literary. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
A vacation hiking New Zealand's Milford Track turns deadly for forensic odontologist Alexa Glock, her brother, and the two dozen people in their group. Make that two groups, since Luxe Tours travelers like Auckland orthopedist Dr. Diana Clark barely hide their scorn for proles like Alexa and her younger brother, Charlie, a geotech engineer visiting from Asheville, who aren't spending a fortune to stay each night in private rooms in upscale lodges along the trail, with bountiful food and drink. Alexa's bare-bones hike has its own highlights. Her group is caught first in a landslide, then in a land tremor; on her own, she discovers the skeletal remains of a man who was evidently stabbed to death; she's attacked by a helicopter that dumps a ton of rock on her find before she has a chance to report it; and while she and Charlie are spending the night in Pompolona Lodge with the Luxe party, he's drugged by someone who steals the camera Alexa used to take photographs of the corpse. No matter, for they soon find a replacement corpse: that of Dr. Clark, whose companions--her schoolteacher sister, Rosie Jones, her anesthesiologist, Dr. Larry Salvú, and her pharmaceutical salesperson, Cassandra Perry--all swear that she must have fallen accidentally from a wire bridge and that they certainly didn't stab her with a pair of hiking poles. The police officers who fly in to join the party uncover accusations against Dr. Clark for serving as a one-doctor pill dispensary that may have led to the overdose death of a patient. In a particularly touristy stroke, the murder plot seems to have been superimposed on the natural and cultural landscape most readers will find the high point here. Familiarly novel territory for fans of Aaron Elkins and Kathy Reichs. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
New Zealand forensic investigator Alexa Glock is not one of those outdoorsy types who sees nature through rose-colored glasses. On a backpacking hike in the mountains, designed to give her a chance to reconnect with her brother, Charlie, Alexa finds the landscape "oppressive, waiting to pounce," and a burbling creek tears past "like something terrifying was chasing it." A rockslide nearly buries her; a suspension bridge wants to flip her into the gorge. The humans are not on her side, either. Things aren't going well with Charlie, and that's before a helicopter swoops overhead with evil intent and someone has murdered a doctor who joined the hike. Alexa spots a clue--an apple bitten into by someone with a gap between front teeth--and as a squall traps the hikers inside a shelter, Alexa muses, about the same time we do, that we're in a "locked-room manor mystery," though this one is surrounded by a natural world as malevolent as the humans inside. This third entry in the Alexa Glock series takes the blinders off our view of the great outdoors.