|
Week of April 14, 2008
A Killing Frost by R.D. Wingfield
Published eight months after its author’s death, this sixth Detective Inspector Jack Frost novel finds our untidy but unbeatable hero investigating a multiple rapist, the contamination of supermarket food and the disappearance of two young girls -- all while facing an ambitious new police adversary, who’s trying to force him from his post.
Week of April 7, 2008
Sleeping Dogs by Ed Gorman
Unleashing a new series, Gorman gives us political speechwriter and sleuth-by-necessity Dev Conrad. He’s just signed onto the unexpectedly troubled re-election campaign of a U.S. senator, and must deal with dirty tricks, campaign sabotage, a suicide and his increasing suspicions about the very man he’s supposed to be helping stay in Congress.
Week of March 31, 2008
A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley
The discovery of a corpse, half-consumed by hyenas, near a place considered magical by Botswana’s bush people, brings Detective David “Kubu” Bengu into a murder investigation that leads him down a trail full of lies, cover-ups, and self-protective muckety-mucks. An intriguing and exotic introduction to a series of Africa-set crime novels.
Week of March 24, 2008
Steel Witches by Patrick Lennon
Two years after Corn Dolls, Tom Fletcher returns -- only he’s no longer a Cambridge cop; now he’s a P.I., drawn into the disappearance and demise of a law student by his errant father’s connection to the case. A forgotten World War II U.S. Air Force base, haunted sisters, and a centuries-old mystery lend richness to Lennon’s yarn.
Week of March 17, 2008
The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes
Ed Loy needs the money, so he accepts the case of a missing jockey, handed him by Father Vincent Tyrrell. But this Dublin gumshoe realizes he’s bought himself trouble, as his investigation leads him into hot water with the powerful Tyrrell family and into the midst of a case that involves double-dealing, gambling and pricey horse flesh.
Week of March 10, 2008
Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman
Baltimore P.I. Tess Monaghan is hired by the writer of an accident-plagued big-budget TV miniseries shooting in her neighborhood to baby-sit ... er, bodyguard that production’s spoiled, 20-year-old star. Not exactly her type of gig. But a crew member’s murder leads Tess to think someone really is trying to shut the film down.
Week of March 3, 2008
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr
Fleeing to Argentina after being framed as a Nazi war criminal, Berlin private eye Bernie Gunther (The One from the Other) is recruited to solve the brutal slayings of two teenage girls -- a case that bears the same markings as one he investigated years earlier in Germany, and that has political implications for Juan Perón’s dictatorship.
Week of February 25, 2008
The Stranger from Home by Frederic Lindsay
In his eighth novel featuring Edinburgh Detective Inspector Jim Meldrum, Lindsay -- “the Godfather of Tartan Noir” -- follows Meldrum’s daughter, Betty, to America, where she may have fallen in love with a murderer. Meanwhile, the DI is looking for a businessman’s missing wife -- a mystery that relates to several unsolved rape cases.
Week of February 18, 2008
The Vagabond Virgins by Ken Kuhlken
Moving forward through time in his series about the detecting Hickey family, Kuhlken gives us Alvaro Hickey, whose search in 1979 for the missing sister of Lourdes Shuler lands him in the middle of a story about the race for the Mexican presidency and an alleged Holy Virgin who may have murdered her German Nazi father.
Week of February 11, 2008
Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith
In their third rollicking adventure, after the events in On the Wrong Track (2007), cowboy sleuths Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer find themselves in San Francisco in 1893, hunting up “detectifying” work. But they may not live long enough in this city’s crowded, dark-alleyed Chinatown to solve the murder they’re intent on investigating.
Week of February 4, 2008
The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone
It’s the late 19th century and conducting autopsies is no longer a crime. Ephraim Carroll has come to Philadelphia to learn about forensics, but the revelations provided by a woman’s corpse, a second murder and crime along the waterfront all force him to choose between revealing a killer and saving the future of his profession.
Week of January 28, 2008
Fatal Lies by Frank Tallis
The brutal slaying of a military cadet outside Vienna, in 1903, draws Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and his cohort, Freud follower Doctor Max Liebermann, into a mystery involving sadism, questions of infidelity and hints at a host of school secrets -- all waiting to be discovered by Liebermann, using the latest psychoanalytic tools.
Week of January 21, 2008
At the City’s Edge by Marcus Sakey
Hoping to build on the acclaim given his first novel, The Blade Itself, Sakey delivers this propulsive standalone about a discharged Iraq war vet, a fast-rising cop in Chicago’s Gang Intelligence Unit, and an 8-year-old boy who witnessed a murder -- and is now threatened by killers with links to Chicago society high and low.
Week of January 14, 2008
The Blue Door by David Fulmer
Taking a break from his historical New Orleans series, Fulmer introduces boxer Eddie Cero, whose willingness to save an old man from a couple of roughnecks on a Philadelphia night brings him a new career -- as a private detective -- and pitches him into the twisted case of a missing soul singer.
Week of January 7, 2008
Death Was the Other Woman by Linda L. Richards
Kitty Pangborn isn’t sure her heavy-drinking boss, 1930s L.A. gumshoe Dexter J. Theroux, is up to the task of tailing a crooked and married businessman on behalf of his jealous mistress. When that capitalist turns up dead in a bathtub, and then disappears, Kitty must prove that she’s no slouch in the detective game, either.
Week of December 31, 2007
Stratton’s War by Laura Wilson
This first entry in a new series finds Detective Inspector Ted Stratton asking inconvenient questions about the “suicide” of a silent screen star in 1940 London, while MI5 agent Diana Calthrop discovers that a senior intelligence official is involved in espionage. As these two cases connect, a pro-fascist cabal and underworld links come to light.
Week of December 17, 2007
Luck Be a Lady, Don’t Die by Robert J. Randisi
Following up on Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime (2006), Randisi delivers a second “Rat Pack Mystery,” set in Vegas in 1960. While Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the gang celebrate the premiere of Oceans 11, casino trouble-shooter Eddie Gianelli searches for a woman who disappeared on Sinatra -- leaving a body in her bathtub.
Week of December 10, 2007
Chillwater Cove by Thomas Lakeman
This sequel to The Shadow Catchers (2006) has FBI Special Agent Peggy Weaver receiving e-mailed porn shots of her best childhood friend, who was kidnapped at age 10 while Peggy escaped. When that friend, later released and now a college professor, again disappears, Weaver plunges into the case, confronting family frictions and legal obstructions.
Week of December 3, 2007
A Hell of A Woman edited by Megan Abbott
The author of Queenpin has assembled such distaff talents as Vicki Hendricks, Donna Moore, Rebecca Pawel, S.J. Rozan, and Zöe Sharp to show that men hold no corner on noir fiction. Yet she’s generous enough to include a few members of the opposite sex, including Daniel Woodrell and Eddie Muller, in this dark, propulsive anthology.
Week of November 26, 2007
Deadly Beloved by Max Allan Collins
More than 20 years after her comic-book debut, Ms. Michael Tree finally stars in her own novel. She’s digging up a conspiracy behind the case of a woman who killed her hubby -- and the hooker he was seeing. But resolving that mystery will require that Ms. Tree re-visit the murder of her own P.I. husband.
Week of November 19, 2007
Salamander Cotton by Richard Kinzmann
South African DI Jacob Tshabalala convinces a former colleague to look into the case of an ex-mining boss, whose murder may be related to a farm with a “dark secret” and the disappearance of his daughter 30 years before. A richly evocative African police procedural, destined to remind readers of the late James McClure’s work.
Week of November 12, 2007
Falling by John Connor
Though still on the mend from a harrowing ordeal, Detective Constable Karen Sharpe is called in to help investigate the murder of a young pregnant woman -- a case that threatens to overwhelm our protagonist, tear apart her already tenuous relationships, and set her on a self-destructive course, even as race riots erupt around her.
Week of November 5, 2007
The Snow Empress by Laura Joh Rowland
“Samurai detective”-turned-Chamberlain Sano Ichiro and his resourceful wife, Reiko, depart 17th-century Japan’s capital in search of their kidnapped son. But before he can reach and retrieve the boy, Ichiro must first solve the murder of a feudal lord’s mistress and figure out what part a mysterious native woman plays in these crimes.
|
|
Week of October 29, 2007
The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
Two years after the events in Christine Falls, an old college chum shows up to talk with 1950s Dublin pathologist Quirke about his wife Deirdre’s apparent suicide. Quirke’s “old itch to ... delve into the dark of what was hidden” leads him to investigate, drawing our hero into a world of sexual obsession and drug addiction.
Week of October 22, 2007
The Ghost by Robert Harris
Stepping down in disgrace after supporting an unpopular American war on terror, British Prime Minister Adam Lang engages a ghost writer to pen his “potentially explosive” memoir. But as the “ghost” discovers, this ex-PM’s past is full of secrets that can be used to manipulate politics -- and cause more deaths in the future.
Week of October 15, 2007
Chicago Blues edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann
This is a collection with big shoulders, appropriate to Chicago. Within its covers we find Kris Nelscott’s first Smokey Dalton short story, a Nate Heller tale from Max Allan Collins, and an original Ray Dudgeon yarn from Sean Chercover, plus gritty submissions from Stuart M. Kaminsky, Sam Reaves, J.A. Konrath, Marcus Sakey, and 14 others.
Week of October 8, 2007
Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley
At the same time as detective Easy Rawlins is losing the love of his life, his homicidal crony, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, is wanted for killing the father of 12 and an ex-marine compadre has dumped his daughter on Easy’s doorstep -- a sure sign that her father is already dead, or soon will be.
Week of October 1, 2007
Damnation Falls by Edward Wright
Disgraced journalist Randall Wilkes returns to his Tennessee hometown to ghost-write his ex-governor friend’s memoir, only to be on hand for the hanging of that politician’s “addled” mother. Another homicide and the discovery of a woman’s long-concealed corpse propel Wilkes to investigate, opening old wounds -- his own and others’.
Week of September 24, 2007
The Silk Train Murder by Sharon Rowse
As a big fan of the Klondike Gold Rush, I was an easy mark for this series opener about a privileged Englishman who, after going bust in the Yukon, signs on to guard a train speeding silk from western Canada to the East Coast -- only to wind up investigating a murder, perhaps committed by his ex-prospecting pard.
Week of September 17, 2007
Walla Walla Suite by Anne Argula
Argula -- the pen name of male writer Darryl Ponicsan -- delivers a second mystery featuring Quinn, a divorced, peri-menopausal cop turned Seattle P.I., who in this yarn searches for a missing woman, only to come up against a serial rapist whose dubious confession and imminent execution compel her to find out the brutal truth. Fast.
Week of September 3, 2007
Dying to Sin by Stephen Booth
Pressured by a new boss, Peak District cops Ben Cooper and Diane Fry must solve the mystery of two corpses found buried at Pity Wood Farm. Unfortunately, they’re following a cold trail. They can only hope that somewhere in that farm’s history lies an answer--if not also a third body to provide the final puzzle bit.
Week of August 27, 2007
Death Message by Mark Billingham
This seventh Tom Thorne thriller begins with the cop receiving photos of corpses on his cell phone, and leads him to a killer he’d sent to prison long ago. Apparently, that murderer has convinced another inmate to exact revenge on the people responsible for his own incarceration and the deaths of his family.
Week of August 20, 2007
The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey
Not long after Windy City cop-turned-P.I. Michael Kelly is hired by his former partner to help solve an eight-year-old rape case, that partner is murdered and the assault victim shows up to accuse Kelly of the crime. Now he’s got two crimes to solve, both of which connect to a cover-up involving a death-sentenced serial killer.
Week of August 13, 2007
Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson
Robinson’s 17th Alan Banks novel is being published in the UK five months before its U.S. debut. In the story, Banks investigates rape and murder amid a warren of alleys behind Eastvale’s market square, while DI Annie Cabbot tackles the case of a woman found in her wheelchair with her throat slit.
Week of August 6, 2007
Crosshairs by Harry Hunsicker
Lee Henry “Hank” Oswald (last seen in 2006’s The Next Time You Die), “retired” from the gumshoe game and bartending in a Dallas chain eatery, pays back a dying Gulf War colleague by trying to locate his missing daughter. At the same time, he assists a terrorized Iranian physician -- a task destined to invite violence.
Week of July 30, 2007
Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell
The 21st Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford novel begins with the chance discovery of a human hand in the woods, and leads Wexford and his Kingsmarkham Police Force colleagues to search for that dead man’s identity and discern how his killing relates to a second body found nearby. Rendell’s at her best with the Wexford series.
Week of July 23, 2007
The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva Burke
This Barry Award-nominated author’s seventh Gabriel Allon novel sends the art restorer and Israeli intelligence agent in Amsterdam, where he purges the files of a professor assassinated for writing about militant Islam in the Netherlands ... and discovers a plot to kidnap the daughter of a U.S. ambassador. A gripping, gratifying spy tale.
Week of July 16, 2007
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
As the summer of 2005 winds down, Louisiana Detective Dave Robicheaux must help restore some sanity to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. With despair spreading, he focuses on capturing a couple of serial rapists, a drug-addled priest, and a vigilante as dangerous as any of the looters suddenly at play in the city.
Week of July 9, 2007
The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas
Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his ex-con apprentice, Thomas Llewelyn, go looking for a missing 12-year-old girl in Victorian London, figuring that white slavers have snatched her. But she might have been abducted instead by wealthy, hedonistic Satanists. This is the fourth in a series of sharply rendered historical thrillers.
Week of July 2, 2007
End Games by Michael Dibdin
In the 11th, and presumably last Aurelio Zen novel (since Dibdin died in March), the Venetian detective is dispatched to southern Italy, where he struggles to penetrate the silence surrounding a murder, while also dealing with a hunt for buried treasure and the filming of a movie based on the Book of Revelation.
Week of June 25, 2007
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan
Novelist-thief Charlie Howard reluctantly takes on the task of stealing two seemingly worthless monkey figurines -- only to wind up as the principal suspect in the murder of an American. Can Charlie figure out whodunit, and thereby clear his name, while also securing the best haul he’s ever had? A much-buzzed-about debut novel.
Week of June 18, 2007
Severed by Simon Kernick
Sean Tyler wakes up beside a headless corpse. He remembers nothing of the previous 24 hours. Yet there’s a videotape of him stabbing someone, and a voice on the phone saying he can make that evidence disappear -- with a catch. Tyler can only stay out of jail by staying alive long enough to re-create the last day of his life.
Week of June 11, 2007
Christietown by Susan Kandel
Fashion-conscious biographer Cece Caruso (Shamus in the Green Room) is trying to finish her book about Agatha Christie, while planning her wedding to L.A. detective Peter Gambino. But the death of an actress performing in the Miss Marple-themed play she’s directing propels Cece back into the sleuthing role she now knows only too well.
Week of June 4, 2007
Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett
Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep (Bangkok Tattoo), stunned after watching a snuff film in which an ex-lover named Damrong stars, sets out to find her killers -- a trail that will lead him to an exclusive men’s club and a psychotic wandering monk, and into the ghostly arms of the late Damrong.
Week of May 28, 2007
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
After being injured on the job, Melbourne cop Joe Cashin heads back home to the southeastern Australia coast, where his skills come in handy probing the beating death of an aged millionaire -- a crime that raises suspicions about the local Aborigines. Filled with personal and political tensions, The Broken Shore won the Ned Kelly Award.
Week of May 21, 2007
The Overlook by Michael Connelly
A revision of Connelly’s New York Times-serialized novella from last year, The Overlook finds Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch breaking in a new partner while he investigates an execution-style killing that quickly morphs into a larger case involving dangerous radioactive materials, and attracts the unwanted attention of the FBI.
Week of May 14, 2007
The Cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson
From the Swedish author of The Princess of Burundi (2006) comes a second police procedural, this one focusing mostly on Inspector Ann Lindell as she and her Uppsala police colleagues strive to locate a missing university professor. But instead, they find two other corpses, these three deaths unrelated. Or so it would seem.
Week of May 7, 2007
Donkey Punch by Ray Banks
Ex-con and unofficial Manchester P.I. Cal Innes makes his second novel-length appearance (after Saturday’s Child, 2006) in a tale that finds him “babysitting” a young boxer coming to his first big tourney in Los Angeles. But rumors of a rigged fight leave our hero too often fighting for the right at the wrong end of a gun barrel.
Week of April 30, 2007
A Killing in Comics by Max Allan Collins
After a comic-books publisher tumbles onto a knife in his mistress's apartment during his 50th birthday party, Jack Starr, the square-jawed troubleshooter for a newspaper syndicate, tries to suss out whodunit, lest the crime be attributed to one of the artists on his own company's payroll. A bit parodyish, but still good 1940s fun.
|
