Mystery Play

 Mystery Play-Elizabeth Kostova

Ballatine Books

Release Date: October 13, 2026

Rating:  📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: When his mother passes away suddenly, Jay Turner finds himself at a crossroads. She was always secretive, raising him alone in Boston and staying single until her death. Returning to their brownstone to clear out her possessions, he finds two unusual objects: a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan,” and a small antique volume bound in leather.

The sight of the volume is chilling. As a young scholar, his mother had been given the medieval book—one of a set commissioned by Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Dracula, just before his death in 1477.  She'd always warned Jay of how dangerous it was, and had donated it to a museum before she died . . . yet here it sits before him.

Taking leave from his position as a history instructor at a boys’ boarding school, Jay sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth century actor whose last and most famous role was the Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper—helped by a mysterious woman named Rhiannon he meets along the way—he uncovers a frightening story of a young actress who fell under Brogan's sway long ago.  And before long, Jay and Rhiannon realize that something similarly implacable is also pursuing them.

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What do you do when you know your family has a history fighting evil and you are trying to live a normal life? Jay Turner has pretty much ignored his family's legacy with Vlad Tepes and been protected from it by his mother, but when his mother dies and he begins to experience odd circumstances, he goes looking for answes. A historian himself, Jay wants to learn about his mother, and can't leave questions unanswered. But the answers take him down disturbing rabbit holes in search of the truth about Gilded Age actor Gael Brogan and his connections to Bram Stoker and Dracula. With the help of Rhiannon "Riley", and others, Jay searches for a truth his mother might have been near enough to have been killed for, and the bodies pile up along the dangerous path.

Mystery Play sends Jay and Riley through libraries and archives searching for Gael Brogan, one of the great Gilded Age actors. It alternates their story with letters and diary entries from Fern Quinn, an actress who worked with Brogan; and journal entries from Jay's mother in 1995 while she was in Italy. It took me a little while to get into Fern's entries, and even longer to get into Jay's mothers—it takes forever before you see why the mother's account is in there and when you do, personally I wasn't convinced. Without giving anything away, let's just say I that I didn't think it didn't added anything useful to the storyline. Fern's entries do, though it takes awhile. The closer she gets to Brogan the more we see of the dangerous man that Jay and Riley may be hunting and I was completely absorbed in finding out what happened to her.

There's a gothic element to Mystery Play. You find yourself wondering with each person Jay meets: are they friend or foe? Actually there to help or setting him up for disaster? And until the very end, there are a few characters that you aren't entirely sure of. Between being actors and (potential) immortals who can and will disguise themselves, you have to question everyone until very much proven otherwise. But that, as well as things like trying to figure out when exactly Brogan becomes an immortal (a vampire? he never tells us what term he'd prefer) is part of the fun for the reader. For someone like me, a historian and archvist by training, watching the characters search libraries and archives and have librarians saving the day is also pretty fun.

I read Kostova's The Historian when it first came out and I remember being captivated by it at the time. So when this book, a kind-of sequel, showed up, I wanted to read it. I didn't remember the first book in detail, but that ended up being fine—while I think there are a few Easter eggs for readers who remember the first book in detail, those who don't (or haven't read it) won't be lost reading this one on its own.

Not necessarily a book I'd recommend reading at night when you're alone in the house.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review