My Review: It’s often said that “money is the root of all evil”, but that’s a misquote. The complete biblical verse says that “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Very much on the other hand, there’s an often repeated contemporary (contemporary to our era and not Wrex and Charlotte’s era) that “money is the root of all evil, but every woman needs roots!” As it turns out, this tenth entry in the Wrexford & Sloane series is set at the crossroads of those two competing uses of the old verse.

My Review: There’s a saying that “War is diplomacy by other means”. The converse is often applied as well, that “Diplomacy is war by other means”. It’s also been said that “War is hell”, so either way, references to hell are certainly applicable in both cases. Which leads straight into the motivations behind many of the characters in this mystery, as espionage is more than capable of being even more hellish than either war or diplomacy, particularly in the hands of a desperate despot doing his damndest to get his power back and keep it.