The Black Shepherd

June 10, 2019
Savile’s so-so second Eurocrimes thriller (after 2018’s The Memory Man) takes Frankie Varg, a field agent for the Eurocrimes Division, which covers sensitive crimes that cross member-state borders, to Tallinn, Estonia, where Frankie’s 19-year-old cousin, Irma Lutz, may have dropped out of the city’s University of Technology and joined a religious cult called One World. Frankie ignores the directive that “no agent was permitted to work a case where they had a personal connection.” In her effort to rescue Irma, she rushes into danger without backup or even a sensible plan of action. Meanwhile, Frankie’s colleague, Peter Ash, comes to Tallinn to identify a murdered woman whose body was discovered in a fire. His main objective, however, is to find Frankie, who’s now posing as a homeless person. She’s quickly recruited into One World and meets its charismatic leader, known as the Shepherd. No surprise, One World turns out to be a vast empire of evil. Readers should be prepared for routine plotting and characters with little depth.

June 15, 2019
Savile's second Eurocrimes caper sets field agents Peter Ash and Francesca Varg against a nefarious quasi-religious cult that entices vulnerable young women away from their fragile support systems and into serious trouble. The two agents' connections to the case are very different. After a spell of rehab mandated by his last assignment (The Memory Man, 2019), Peter has returned to Tallinn, Estonia, in hopes of identifying an unknown body found in the woods. Frankie's interest is considerably more personal. She's searching for her cousin, Irma Lutz, who's suddenly gone missing from the University of Technology in Tallinn. Peter benefits from every bit of intelligence and support Eurocrimes staffer Laura Byrne can provide him; Frankie, who's disguised herself as Ceska Volk, a runaway waif living on the streets, is connected to her colleagues by nothing more tangible than a tracking device. Frankie has an unexpectedly illuminating conversation with Irma's flatmate, Annja Rosen, who tells her that Irma had recently become obsessed with the seductive cult One World. But before Annja can meet with Peter, she's killed by the same bent cop who first interviewed her when Irma disappeared and excised all mention of One World. Separated by her own wish from his unofficial partner, Peter joins forces instead with Mirjam Rebane, the local cop working the case of the body in the woods. Frankie, meanwhile, succeeds all too completely in insinuating herself into the clutches of John Shepherd, the self-proclaimed prophet of One World, who comes across "like a living TED Talk," each one of them convinced that they're the cat to the other's mouse. Savile does his best to add some novel twists to a depressingly familiar plot.

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July 1, 2019
Savile carries on a fading tradition in British crime fiction?cops with good manners, dry humor, and a taste for theater. "You just won the criminal conspiracy lottery," Peter Ash of the Eurocrimes Division gleefully tells a creep after slapping on the cuffs. Readers of Savile's earlier work know that the "jolly-good" stuff fronts darker matters; The Memory Man (2019) boasted a plot grounded in mutilation. The touch is a bit lighter here. This time Ash and his salty colleague, Frankie Varg, tangle with a feel-good religion Ash calls a "cult of crazy," headed by an "obvious bullshit merchant." And the zombie-fication of sad youngsters doesn't stop with messaging; a predatory grin flashes through all the love-bombing, as the converts are drugged and manipulated into the "people trade," human trafficking. The pretty ones become bait in blackmail schemes. Savile keeps yanking the rug from under our expectations: cops turned killers, jarring betrayals we don't see coming. A fine read?and a scary one, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)