Mystery Notes

The Gourmet Detective scours New Orleans for a missing cookbook and gastronomical heaven in the latest installment (after last year's Eat, Drink, and Be Buried) of Peter King's mystery series for foodies, Roux the Day. What begins as a reasonably simple mission—authenticating an old book of recipes via its most famous dish, oysters Belvedere—quickly gets complicated by murder, forgery and a posse of lady chefs who kidnap the epicurean hero. (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 288p ISBN 0-312-28365-2)

When undertaker Drew Slocome (who returns from Rebecca Tope's Dark Undertakings) discovers an extra body in his environmentally conscious Peaceful Repose Cemetery, he jumps at the chance to investigate, because "mysteries existed to be solved—like Everest." The police only know that the unidentified old woman didn't die of natural causes, and as for what the townsfolk know—well, several of them just aren't telling in Grave Concerns. (St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $24.95 352p ISBN 0-312-28127-7)

Good intentions go awry and a newly discovered psychic gift becomes life-threatening in Ellis Vidler's debut, Haunting Refrain. After a psychometric photographer touches a headband and witnesses, in her mind's eye, a missing coed's murder, and a reporter hard up for news mentions the mystery vision, the girl's killer embarks on a new homicidal mission: he'll do anything to keep Kate McGuire from getting him caught. (Overmountain/Silver Dagger [Ingram, dist.], $23.95 184p ISBN 1-57072-174-2; $13.95 paper -175-0)

The third mystery featuring Wade Davis and Leda Fulford, skilled police detectives and hapless on-again, off-again lovers, has the duo investigating the murder of an oncology nurse, the disappearance of a doctor and the cold-blooded calculations behind a hospital euthanasia scam. Retired professor Wayne Minnic (The Crossbow Murder) packs everything from to familial guilt to a doctor bent on revenge in Dying in Care. (Creative Arts, $13.95 paper ISBN 0-88739-413-2)

Mystery fans and would-be scribes will welcome two slim but excellent reference works, AZ Murder Goes... Artful (Poisoned Pen, $13.95 paper 220p ISBN 1-890208-26-4), revised from its original 1998 appearance, and AZ Murder Goes... Professional ($14.95 paper 127p 1-59058-003-6). In the former, edited by Susan Malling and Barbara Peters, writers such as Nevada Barr and Aaron Elkins reflect, respectively, on the art treasures of national parks and the mystery of forgery; in the latter, edited by Peters, Lee Childs introduces a lineup that includes Nancy Pickard, who considers what it feels like to carry on the tradition of Virginia Rich, and John Dunning, who ponders how his various jobs—as a glass cutter, as a racetrack peon—have informed his writing.