MinotaurÂ
Published November 18, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
It has been five years since readers have had a new mystery featuring the Reverend Clare Fergusson and her recently retired police chief husband Russ Van Alstyne. They are back, with a new baby and a rip-roarer of a plot that pairs the warmth of Christmas in small town upstate New York with a dangerous investigation into an extremist cell planning something violent. This juxtaposition of coziness and action is a hallmark of this long-running series, which features as a protagonist an Episcopal priest who also has been a combat pilot in the military and knows her way around a Blackhawk helicopter. Here, she and Russ are startled when a float at a parade to open the Christmas season displays a racist banner. Could there be white supremacists in the placid hamlet of Millers Kill?
Clare wants to know more, so chats with Meghan, a woman she meets at the offensive float, getting an invitation to visit their family to Russ’s dismay. Still, he goes with her and shoots targets in the woods with her husband while Claire gets to know the woman and her children. They seem like normal, neighborly folks apart from a conviction that the Jews are in control of everything and are bringing in immigrants to take their freedom away. That veneer of normality is gone when a man stops by, wanting to borrow equipment from her husband. Meghan (who “leaves politics to her husband”) clearly doesn’t like Calvin, who seems rude and angry, while Clare wonders about his mousy young wife, Tiny. Clare and Russ return to Christmas preparations, just as the novels’ twin story lines are about to explode into non-stop action.
Russ has been worried about a young cop who went under cover with a right-wing militia and vanished from sight. His assignment canceled, law enforcement seems uninterested in his whereabouts, but Russ and the young man’s erstwhile girlfriend are worried. They team up with a Mohawk forest ranger whose uncle has disappeared in the Adirondacks wilderness to search for the missing men. When Clare borrows a small aircraft from her parents to make a flyover, they find signs of a compound and are fired on. Something is clearly afoot, and though it’s hard to get officials to take action, fearing a messy confrontation without sufficient evidence to make arrests, the consequences could be dire.
Weaving between Clare’s interactions with Tiny, Calvin’s browbeaten and brainwashed young wife as she uncovers the ultimate goals of the militia and Russ’s venture into the mountains to find the right-wing group, the story grows increasingly tense, culminating in a nail-biting confrontation when the militia springs its trap.
Each section of the book is framed around readings for the four weeks of advent, and when the pair and their allies aren’t risking their lives, preparations for Christmas go on. It’s a somewhat jarring contradiction, yet it brings home the ways extremist hate can fester under the surface even in the most pastoral, peaceful corners of the country. Spencer-Fleming does an admirable job of making her antagonists seem a disconcerting mix of reasonable and violently racist rather than making them simply monstrous. When the final confrontation comes, it’s all the more shocking, knowing that the violence is coming from people who aren’t that different than the soldiers Clare once fought beside or the police officers who were Russ’s colleagues.
Though it has been a long time coming, this tenth book in the series will be welcomed by its many fans. Newcomers to the series may at times find it tricky to keep up with the many returning characters, but it is an excellent chance to get to know them, and to enjoy the author’s skillful mix of traditional and cozy motifs with big themes and adrenaline-boosting action.