The Shadow of the Soul: The Forgotten Gods, Book 2

Following on the heels of A Matter of Blood, this familiar mix of shadowy cabals and brutal violence sees London struck by a series of terrorist attacks. Authorities are perplexed when the perpetrator appears to be a single individual not bound by the usual limits of space and time. At the same time, DI Cass Jones struggles to deal with a plague of suicides, all of whom died uttering the same cryptic phrase: “Chaos in the darkness.” Cass knows what few others do: the world is run by a vast occult conspiracy and the current events are only the latest moves in a long game. Abigail Porter’s sister is one of the suicides; Abigail is a government functionary near the center of the efforts to manage the aftermath of the attacks, and she personifies the intersection of national security interests with the personal tragedies of young lives cut short. Pinborough’s prose and characters are engaging and the novel is interesting despite its occasional predictability. (Aug.)