A foul thing

Gr 9 Up--Two novellas follow familiar faces from These Violent Delights. In A Foul Thing, Roma and Juliette are trying to live a quiet and anonymous life as underground weapons dealers, but when Russian girls begin turning up dead, they can't look the other way. In This Foul Murder, Benedikt and Marshall are hunting a scientist when their ride on the Trans-Siberian Express is interrupted by a murder. To keep their mission on track, they convince the conductor they are investigators who can take charge of the mystery, which has more to do with their own mission than expected. Gong's novellas can't stand alone, but have the familiar banter and violence of her original duology. Readers may find this mini-duology has lower stakes than the original, maintaining the couples' happily ever after. VERDICT An additional purchase where Gong's original series is popular.

This volume containing two novellas from the world of These Violent Delights presents new mysteries featuring familiar faces. In A Foul Thing, Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai's life of wedded bliss in Zhouzhuang township is disrupted by a ghost from their past. It's 1931, 4 years since they faked their own deaths in the explosion that rocked Shanghai, when a young man approaches them with a request to protect his fiancee. After Roma and Juliette save the woman from an assailant, she reveals that she once participated in an experiment conducted by a group of Russian scientists and Lourens Van Dijk, the man whose serum made Rosalind, Juliette's cousin, immortal. Alarmed by Van Dijk's involvement, the couple decide to probe deeper, and the answers they find compel them to ask old friends for help. Things pick up a few months later in This Foul Murder, when lovers Benedikt Montagov and Marshall Seo board the Trans-Siberian Express to find Van Dijk and bring him to Zhouzhuang. A gruesome murder at the start of the journey threatens to disrupt the train schedule, so Benedikt and Marshall take matters into their own hands and begin investigating to find the killer. The stories, while action-packed and full of danger, are less harrowing than the characters' previous adventures. Flirty banter and tender moments between both couples are liberally sprinkled throughout, making for entertaining interludes that set the stage for the next book. Will delight shippers and whet fans' appetites. (Historical fantasy. 13-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.