Fiction Book Reviews: 11/2/2009

This flat novel by the esteemed Dutch author Möring (In Babylon) is occasionally interesting but lacks much memorable material. In a sort of riff on A Christmas Carol, Jacob Noah, a Holocaust survivor turned wealthy Dutch businessman, dies in a 1980 car accident near the town of Assen in the Netherlands. On the same night, the town is home to a massive rave, and this breakneck party forms the backdrop for Noah's peregrinations with the ghostly “Jew of Assen,” who takes dead Noah on a tour of the loved ones he lost contact with during his financial rise. On the same night, celibate intellectual Marcus Kopla has one last chance to win back Noah's daughter, Chaja, and though the fates of the two men don't intersect, they are linked by their love for Chaja. The novel is well conceived, and its free-form prose flows, but the characters don't come across, stripping the book of emotional impact and dramatic suspense. Moreover, the sprawling story's potentially intriguing historical and philosophical implications are never worked to their potential. (Mar.)

Veteran journalist Pekkanen debuts with a promising yet pedestrian post–chick lit novel about a successful New York ad exec who's passed over for a promotion then unceremoniously canned. Workaholic Lindsey Rose leaves Manhattan for her family's Maryland home, resuming her role as the smart, capable daughter. Years of jealousy surge into overdrive at her beautiful twin sister Alex's engagement party when she watches her lifelong friend Bradley, possibly the guy that got away, begin to fall under her sister's golden spell. After the obligatory ugly duckling makeover, Lindsey, no longer the plain daughter, continues to hide her new look from her family. Away from them, however, a newly confident and gregarious Lindsey emerges, one able to parlay her advertising skills into a new position at a matchmaking service. It takes a terrifying medical diagnosis and a visit to her parents' musty attic to complete Lindsey's transformation. Though the story is Lindsey's, Alex also plays a large part, though her selfishness is so relentlessly portrayed, it's difficult to determine just who she is. The pace is slow, and the story just adequate. (Mar.)

This alternately hilarious and melancholy classic of Hungarian literature plumbs the psyches of a husband and wife burdened with a homely daughter. After Ákos Vajkay and his wife, Antónia, dispatch Skylark, their stifling, unattractive and overbearing daughter, to visit with relatives, they revitalize their lives in Szarszeg, their backwater village, and recapture their youth with the Panthers, a schnapps-swilling men's social club. During their daughterless week, Ákos and Antónia rekindle their joy in living, taking in a transformative production of The Geisha and engaging in a drinking binge and epic meals at the local tavern. With their health and happiness returned to them, the disquieting realization of Skylark's return sets in, leading to an inevitable confrontation. The author slyly depicts a smalltown life that remains curiously relevant today with his exploration of the tension between the politics of the left and the right, atheism and Christianity, and parents and their children. Though written 80 years ago, this remains a deftly executed, thoughtful meditation on mortality and the passage of time. (Mar.)

Erdrich's bleak latest (after The Plague of Doves) chronicles the collapse of a family. Irene America is a beautiful, introspective woman of Native American ancestry, struggling to finish her dissertation while raising three children. She is married to Gil, a painter whose reputation is built on a series of now iconic portraits of Irene, but who can't break through to the big time, pigeonholed as a Native American painter. Irene's fallen out of love with Gil and discovers that he's been reading her diary, so she begins a new, hidden, diary and uses her original diary as a tool to manipulate Gil. Erdrich deftly alternates between excerpts from these two diaries and third-person narration as she plots the emotional war between Irene and Gil, and Gil's dark side becomes increasingly apparent as Irene, fighting her own alcoholism, struggles to escape. Erdrich ties her various themes together with an intriguing metaphor—riffing on Native American beliefs about portraits as shadows and shadows as souls—while her steady pacing and remarkable insight into the inner lives of children combine to make this a satisfying and compelling novel. (Feb.)

The inner life of Emily Dickinson was creatively effulgent, psychologically pained and emotionally ambivalent, as reported by Charyn, who here inhabits the mind of one of America's most famous poets. Charyn parrots the cadent voice of razor-sharp Dickinson, beginning in her years as the tempestuous young lyricist who aims to “choose my words like a rapier that can scratch deep into the skin.” From the first page, witty Emily harbors conflicted feelings toward her female status: her esteemed father, the town's preeminent lawyer, adores Emily at home for her intellectual companionship, but also dismisses her formal education as “a waste of money & a waste of time,” and it's easy to see how Emily's poetic instincts are born from the shifting sensations of comfort and resentment brought by a childhood spent “serenading Father with my tiny Tambourine.” Emily's growth is brightly drawn as she progresses from petulant child to a passionate “woman with a ferocious will” and finally to that notorious recluse. However, while this vivid impersonation is a stylistic achievement, it's also confining and limits higher revelations. (Feb.)

This brisk romantic mystery, set in post-WWI London, begins with a situation worthy of E.M. Forster as Evelyn Gifford and her family receive a visit from a nurse and a young boy who claim to be the wartime lover and child of Evelyn's late brother. Evelyn has little time to ponder the implications: a lawyer in training, she is pressed into service when her firm takes the case of a war veteran accused of murdering his wife and burying her body in the woods (along with all incriminating evidence). Evelyn believes in the man's innocence and tries to unearth new evidence that will exonerate him, but complicating her investigation are Nicholas Thorne, a handsome but engaged attorney whom Evelyn falls for, and the nurse, Meredith, who, having moved in with the Gifford family, begins to force Evelyn out of her settled existence. Despite these distractions, Evelyn doggedly follows a trail of clues leading back to a wartime coverup. In this determinedly old-fashioned novel of tangled mystery and morality, Evelyn makes for a smart and resolutely modest heroine. (Feb.)

The story of the man who never comes back from sea has been embedded in the lore of eastern Canada. Moore's third work of fiction (after Alligator) imagines the impact one such disaster—the 1982 sinking of the Ocean Ranger—has on Helen O'Mara, a mother of three small children whose husband, Cal, dies at sea. The narrative jumps in time from Helen's life with Cal, the accident itself and the years after in which Helen tries to keep her life intact. Whether it is Helen longing for companionship, designing wedding dresses or learning yoga, everything she does is done with a view to Cal. Most scenes are quietly reflective, and Moore's strength is her ability to inject evocative images and expressive tones to otherwise static and overly earnest passages (as in “Is this what a life is? Someone, in the middle of cleaning the bathroom, remembers you tasting the ocean on your fingers long after you're gone.”) There's no plot—the narrative consists of fragments from Helen's life—and while some readers may find the patchwork engaging, the absence of a through-line makes the work meandering. (Feb.)

Mullins (The Rug Merchant) creates a thematically heavy but emotionally vacant web of connections in her second novel. For siblings Oliver and Mary, a series of tragedies defines their childhood. On the same day that a neighborhood girl dies, their pathologist father also dies suddenly, leaving their mother to abandon the adoption of what would be the family's third child. Twenty-one years later, Mary, a flight attendant, maintains a safe cruising altitude above the pain and loss that, to her, characterize life. Oliver, obsessed with finding his lost brother, helps grieving families memorialize loved ones by creating video tributes to their lives. Oliver's encounter with Miranda, a beautiful young photographer-artist, is the first of a series of interactions among strangers who might become something more. Mullins's novel is an extended exploration of similar connections made and missed, but the author is more focused on driving home her ideas than developing her characters, who come across as thematic functionaries. The emotional vacuum left in the wake of Mullins's dedication to her ideas makes this a difficult book to get into. (Feb.)

Don Juan catapults over a garden wall and into the life of an anonymous narrator in this short, frustrating novel. Over the course of a week, the narrator, a lonely French innkeeper, listens to Don Juan relate the adventures that culminate with his arrival at the inn. In the preceding seven days, Don has traveled from Tbilisi to Damascus, Norway, Holland and then to “the last country, completely nameless” before making his way to the French inn. The reason for his travels is never made clear, nor is his motivation for relating his story to the innkeeper. This sense of mysterious imbalance is compounded by the narrator's recounting of Don Juan's tales, which often deal with seductions and couplings either offstage or with clinical swiftness. The pointedly dry story about a character famous as a connoisseur of pleasures holds interest as a concept, but the novel's entertainment value is quickly buried under a pile of unanswered questions, and the endless deferring of literal and figurative climaxes feels almost like punishment. (Feb.)

In three novellas as dark as they are exuberant, Harrison delivers protagonists who are smart, lusty in that classic Harrison fashion and linked by “The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me,” a Patsy Cline song that appears throughout and could easily serve as the characters' theme song. The first novella recounts the story of Sarah, who is dragged to rural Montana by her neglectful parents and, at age 15, is the victim of a sexual assault that provides her with an undying thirst for revenge. The collection's second and strongest novella features a recurring Harrison character, Brown Dog, a half-Indian free spirit who cares for his ailing stepdaughter who is afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome. (He also has sex a lot.) The final piece presents Samuel, who as a child traveling in Mexico contracted viruses that now cause werewolflike spells that render him a “permanent stranger.” Harrison (Legends of the Fall) shows he is still at the top of his game with these compressed gems. Taken together, they present another fine accomplishment in a storied career. (Jan.)

The title novella in Boyles's ninth collection is as good as anything the prolific author of The Women has written. Basing his story on the historical Victor of Aveyron, the feral child discovered in the wilds of France in 1797 and slowly brought to heel indoors under the patient but understandably frustrated doctor Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Boyle interrogates history with an experienced reader's wariness of sentimental revisionism and a great writer's attention to precisely what defines the child's wildness. The 13 other stories are a grab bag of Boyles's signature modes and are, therefore, mixed. There's “Question 62,” a by-the-numbers suburban comedy concerning an escaped tiger; “La Concita,” a dutiful requiem for baby boomer ordinary guyism; and “Sin Dolor,” a bona fide Borgesian legend about a child whose inability to feel pain fails to protect him from more subtle wounds. Stronger material is found in “The Lie,” about a man who lies about his newborn baby's death to get out of work, comprising one of the book's few surprises. What's largely missing is experimentation, intimacy and deviation from a catalogue throughout which Boyle has proven himself doggedly reliable; one wonders when this wild child got housebroken. (Jan.)

Near the start of this solid thriller from bestseller Preston, the U.S. president's science adviser asks former CIA operative Wyman Ford, last seen in 2008's Blasphemy, to look into the sudden appearance of radioactive gemstones, in particular to identify the precise location of their origin in Cambodia. Meanwhile, college dropout and frustrated astronomer Abbey Straw, who believes she witnessed a meteor's fall, embarks on a search of small islands near her Maine home to locate pieces of the meteorite to sell on eBay. In California, soon-to-be murdered professor Jason Freeman sends Mark Corso, a Mars mission technician at the National Propulsion Facility, a classified hard drive with evidence of gamma rays emanating from the red planet. The three story lines end up neatly intersecting, though the final payoff doesn't do justice to the engaging setup. Preston refrains from inserting the scientific minilectures of which the late Michael Crichton was so fond. (Jan.)

Tormented lives brutally intersect in Stroby's powerful thriller, the possible first in a new series to feature Sara Cross, the lone woman sheriff's deputy in Florida's St. Charles County. One night, Cross, a single mother who's coping with her son's leukemia and the remnants of a two-years-gone postdivorce fling with fellow deputy Billy Flynn, arrives on the edge of a cypress swamp where Flynn has just shot a 22-year-old black man from New Jersey allegedly fleeing a traffic stop. Sara tries to smother her still-simmering lust for no-good Billy, but her cop instincts drive her toward a dismaying truth that hurtles her into a violent showdown with an aging New Jersey contract killer stricken with a rare cancer. While relentlessly probing the eternal mystery of why bright and capable women fall for dangerous losers, Stroby (The Heartbreak Lounge) explores moral choices that leave his devastatingly real characters torn between doing nothing and risking everything. (Jan.)

At the start of Doetsch's tricky thriller, an innocent man, Nicholas Quinn, is in police custody, suspected of murdering his wife, Julia, at their house in upscale Byram Hills, N.Y. Then a stranger gives Nick a watchlike device that allows him to change the past by sending him back, one hour at a time, for half a day. When Nick goes back in time, he discovers single events are the result of a complex web of causes. Saving his wife means untangling a plot that includes a robbery committed by corrupt cops, a horrendous plane crash and a mysterious family secret. Julia's fate seems to be inevitable, one way or another, and Nick's tampering brings death to friends and allies along the way. At times Doetsch (The Thieves of Faith) oversells Nick's anguish with breathless prose, and no character emerges as more than a cardboard cutout, but readers will enjoy the clever razzle-dazzle of a story whose parts fit together like clockwork. (Jan.)

As in his previous novel, A&R, MTV executive Flanagan presents a life in the music biz, this time in the form of a perhaps too-sprawling history of rock and roll and the men behind the scenes. In 1967, young attorney Jack Flynn ingratiates himself to budding British rock act the Ravons by easing singer Emerson Cutler out of a messy divorce, getting the band out of a disastrous contract and taking the rap for the musicians' attempted drug smuggling, the last of which gets Flynn disbarred. For the next four decades, his fate is intertwined with the band, even as it dissolves at the first whiff of success: Emerson goes solo and becomes a minor sensation in America, while keyboardist Simon's dreary tunes send him touring the Communist bloc. Tragic bass player Charlie fades quickly into obscurity, but nearly strikes it rich through other avenues. Flynn's role as manager is a wonderful balancing act, both for the protagonist and the author, and Flanagan, despite his tendency to leave absolutely nothing out (and, curiously, a missed opportunity with a devilish producer), pulls it all together into a complex, humorous and touching story. (Jan.)

An “atheist with a soul” is in for a lot of soul-searching in MacArthur genius Goldstein's rollicking latest (Mazel). Cass Seltzer, a university professor specializing in “the psychology of religion,” hits the big time with a bestselling book and an offer to teach at Harvard—quite a step up from his current position at Frankfurter University. While waiting for his girlfriend to return from a conference, Cass receives an unexpected visit from Roz Margolis, whom he dated 20 years earlier and who looks as good now as she ever did. Her secret: dedicating her substantial smarts to unlocking the secrets of immortality. Cass's recent success and Roz's sudden appearance send him into contemplation of the tumultuous events of his past, involving his former mentor, his failed first marriage and a young mathematical prodigy whose talent may go unrealized, culminating in a standing-room-only debate with a formidable opponent where Cass must reconcile his new, unfamiliar life with his experience of himself. Irreverent and witty, Goldstein seamlessly weaves philosophy into this lively and colorful chronicle of intellectual and emotional struggles. (Jan.)

The pseudonymous Boyd, a former FBI agent, fails to bring much convincing insider information to his debut, a routine thriller. FBI deputy assistant director Kate Bannon tracks down Steve Vail, a maverick FBI agent who left the bureau for a new life as a Chicago bricklayer, because she needs Vail's help in apprehending a criminal gang, the Rubaco Pentad, with a grudge against the FBI. The Pentad follows up the murder of L.A. reporter Connie Lysander, who wrote a story critical of the FBI, with ever-increasing demands for money from the bureau to forestall future killings and the setting of sophisticated death traps. When an agent disappears while making a payoff to the gang, he becomes a prime suspect, despite Vail's reservations. Predictable plot elements include the hero's incredible escapes from peril and the growing romantic bond between the laconic Vail and the attractive Bannon. The identity of the person behind the Pentad will surprise few. (Feb.)

Berney, author of the collection The Road to Bobby Joe and Other Stories, proves just as adept at longer fiction in this fast-moving caper novel, which smoothly blends humor, action and romantic frisson. Charles “Shake” Bouchon steps out of a California prison resolved to stay “free and clear”; 48 hours later he's effectively double-crossed powerful Armenian L.A. mob boss Alexandra Ilandryan, ripped off dangerous Las Vegas powerhouse Dick “the Whale” Moby and impulsively rescued exotic con woman Gina Clement, who may be the most dangerous of the three. Extremely rare, highly unusual religious artifacts play a key role as the 42-year-old Shake attempts to extricate himself from a situation that gets more complex and deadly by the hour. Shake is a quick-thinking fellow with dreams of owning a restaurant, but if fate is kind, he'll return for the same kinds of adventures as those Berney recounts in this engaging debut. (Jan.)

In bestseller Higgins's exciting 17th Sean Dillon thriller (after A Darker Place), Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin is behind a plot to kill Dillon and other members of the British prime minister's private intelligence army as payback for their being such a thorn in his side over the years. In London, Gen. Charles Ferguson, who's just left a late-night meeting of Commonwealth ministers, is walking toward his car when it explodes, killing his driver. In New York City, Maj. Harry Miller, who's in the U.S. to attend a U.N. meeting, goes for a stroll in Central Park, where he neatly turns the tables on a hired hit man. Extensive flashbacks explain how the attacks on each of the marked men evolved, with much space devoted to the chief assassin, Daniel Holley. Higgins provides a more cerebral story than usual, but he doesn't stint on action. Though most of the plot threads tie up nicely, the ending makes clear that readers will be seeing Holley again. (Jan.)

Canadian novelist Echlin (Elephant Winter) derives a powerful, transcendent love story from the Cambodian genocide. Anne Greves, a motherless 16-year-old student, meets a Cambodian refugee, Serey, working as a math instructor amid the heady music scene of late-1970s Montreal, and they fall irredeemably in love. Serey's family got him out of Pol Pot's Cambodia, although he is waiting to be able to return and find them; Anne's father, a successful engineer of prosthetics, does not approve of Anne's exotic, older boyfriend, and when, as her father predicted, Serey leaves her, disappearing for 11 years, Anne journeys to Phnom Penh to find him. There she comes face to face with the terrible fallout of the collapsed Khmer Rouge dictatorship. The beautifully spare narrative is daringly imaginative in the details, drawing the reader deep inside the wounded capital city. Anne's single-mindedness drives the action, although her insistence on Western values of accountability knocks hollowly against the machinery of a ruthless military state. Echlin employs some implausible romance plotting and spoils the suspense early on, yet she creates a sorrowfully compelling world. (Jan.)

A tenderly contentious marriage of many decades forms the tragic-comic snarl in this lively novel. Edwin and Erna Mortens have grown so familiar and repugnant to each other that death would be a blessed release. The novel is told in alternate first-person chapters—first wife, then husband—and each voice is wonderfully energetic and emotionally charged. Edwin is a former director of a retirement home (his job was to “oversee the process of death”) whose gradual loss of sight robbed him of his job and his sense of self-worth; powerless to do anything without his wife's help (he calls her “Sweetie” and his “prison warden”), and deteriorating rapidly, Edwin rails against his imminent death and Erna's perceived duplicity. Erna, meanwhile, is losing her hearing, and though dutiful and long-suffering, she is also mischievous, offering Edwin's old room to their building's young super. Saeterbakken skillfully creates a delightful, solipsistic tension between the querulous old couple. Their kinship is a lovely, bitter riot. (Jan.)

A burned-out Toronto cabdriver named Andrew holds together a debut novel that braves big themes of grief and loss, but drowns in an excess of characters and plot. A former war photographer, Andrew abandoned his career after an existential crisis; meanwhile, his recently widowed father has become dangerously helpless in his grief; and Andrew's best friend, a literary magazine editor (and a Somali immigrant, like the author), feels his marriage withering after his son's death. In addition, Andrew crosses paths with an old student of his mother's, a successful actress named Sarah, with potentially serious consequences. Santur weaves together these relationships believably and invents credible interior lives for his characters, but his narrative has a tendency to wander in random directions: Andrew's Helsinki lover; Andrew's sister, Natalie; the minutiae of characters' work (including a full-length short story written by one). Heavy-handed rumination over life, death, art and politics also weighs down the proceedings. Though a disappointing start, Santur's career could blossom with experience and a more diligent editor. (Jan.)

Dupree's debut offers readers an unvarnished look at the troubled, violence-filled lives of inner-city youth in Washington, D.C., frequently through the eyes and experiences of Camille Logan. Ten-year-old Camille is placed with the Brinkleys, yet another foster family, where she suffers extreme mental and sexual abuse for years, until she's rescued by Chu, a low-level drug dealer who actually loves and looks after her. But when Chu is murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, Camille makes a desperate choice to join a cruel pimp's stable, where she faces her situation and struggles to change her life. DuPree displays an excellent ear for the dialogue, thinking, music and worldviews of her young characters and a talent for setting: the grimy streets, rundown hotels, beatup houses, sweaty house parties and clubs feel real and far above standard street lit. But the ending falls short, as though the author has a sequel in mind. (Jan.)

Tessa Harlow returns home to her father and her birthplace, Las Ladronas, N.Mex., after a traumatic accident. There she meets Vince, a single father with three high-spirited girls. Vince and Tessa soon become lovers, but know they can't have anything more permanent, because as Tessa tells him, she's a “wanderer.” Also, as Tessa snoops into town history, she uncovers secrets that call into question everything she thinks she knows about her parents. Too many interlinking plots and convenient resolutions temper the firm grasp O'Neal (The Lost Recipe for Happiness) has of the spiritual Southwest. In her favor is a talent for persuasively portraying men, women and children and a definite reverence for cooking. So while the contrived climax may annoy, the recipes and the depth of the characters will please. (Jan.)

The first installment in the Winds Across the Prairie series by Rogers (Not on the Menu) is a serviceable, conventional novel. The plot promises entertainment: orphaned Lucinda Bishop moves from Boston to the Oklahoma Territory to live with her Aunt Amelia and Uncle Ben, and finds true love after Jake Starnes recognizes his need for Jesus Christ and faces his past. The writing, however, plods along in a rut of short, dry sentences: “He blinked and shook his head. He had to quit daydreaming and face reality. Lucinda Bishop would never marry him. He'd never marry anyone.” Plot twists occur, but with little fanfare or drama: Lucinda may be being stalked, Aunt Clara appears at the door and a tornado destroys the ranch house. Some readers will balk at the relegation of women to the kitchen (where they all love kitchen work) and the obvious Christian jargon throughout—“God loves you now and always will. He loved you enough to have His Son die for you”—but others will enjoy this traditional tale. (Jan.)

Bestseller Koontz (Relentless) delivers a hard-to-classify stand-alone set near the Rocky Mountains that will appeal more to fans of his Odd Thomas books than those partial to his Hitchcockian thrillers. While out for a walk, reclusive Grady Adams and his wolfhound, Merlin, spot two white furry animals “as large as midsize dogs” and “as quick and limber as cats” that aren't like anything previously known to science. The sudden arrival of these mysterious creatures out of the blue appears to be linked to several other baffling phenomena. Meanwhile, a sadist, Henry Rouvroy, tracks down his identical twin, James, and kills him and James's wife in order to assume his brother's identity. After the murders, Rouvroy is unsettled by evidence that the dead have not stayed dead. Koontz's cryptic dedication to Aesop (“twenty-six centuries late and with apologies for the length”) may hold the key to what's going on, but readers are likely to find the moral of this peculiar tale, if there is one, obscure. (Dec.)

New Zealand serves as the alluring backdrop for Atherton's thin 15th paranormal detective mystery to feature Lori Shepherd (after 2009's Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon). At the request of dying spinster twins Ruth and Louise Pym, Lori heads down under to find out what happened to their older, disinherited brother, Aubrey Pym. In New Zealand, Lori discovers Aubrey is dead, and his son, Edmund, soon follows Aubrey to the grave. As a result, Lori must deliver the vital message the Pym sisters entrusted to her to Ed's 18-year-old runaway daughter, Bree. As Lori tours such scenic sites as Waipoua Forest and Tongariro National Park in her hunt for Bree, Aunt Dimity's journal provides otherworldly encouragement. Since Peter Jackson is filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy during Lori's visit, Tolkien references abound. What starts as a missing person's case turns into a travelogue, charming but not very mysterious. (Feb.)

At the start of British author Adam's superb second mystery to feature Gianni Castiglione (after 2006's The Rainaldi Quartet), the accomplished luthier has the honor and privilege of repairing an Italian national treasure, Nicolo Paganini's priceless il Cannone (“the Cannon”), in time for a rising young Russian, Yevgeny Ivanov, to play it at a recital that same evening in the Cremona cathedral. After Ivanov's triumphant performance, events takes a sinister turn with the puzzling murder of a well-connected art dealer and the even more perplexing find of a rare and valuable Paganini artifact. Though Castiglione is by no means a detective, his knowledge and musical expertise prove indispensable to his policeman friend, Antonio Guastafeste, as they travel around Europe in search of the killer (or killers). Readers will find Adam's full-bodied characters captivating but never transparent as the clever plot, enriched by meticulously detailed historical intrigues, builds to its satisfying conclusion. (Jan.)

Griffiths's serviceable first mystery introduces archeologist Ruth Galloway, who leads a quiet life in a remote region of Norfolk, England, known as the Saltmarsh. When Det. Chief Insp. Harry Nelson asks for her expertise in identifying human remains found in the marsh, he's disappointed when Ruth determines they date to the Iron Age. Harry, who's been haunted for 10 years by the kidnapping of five-year-old Lucy Downey, hoped the bones could bring closure to the girl's family. Drawn into the investigation, Ruth delves deeper into Lucy's disappearance and studies the letters Harry has received over the years, presumably from the kidnapper. When another young girl goes missing, Ruth and Harry fear the cycle has begun again. With her brittle exterior and general distaste for human companionship, Ruth is a difficult heroine with whom to empathize, but the novel's archeological details and the unsettling denouement go far in making up for her prickly character. (Jan.)

Lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski, Sam Acquillo's friend, turns a brief contact with client Sergey Pontecello into a personal crusade in Knopf's entertaining fifth mystery set in the Hamptons (after 2009's Hard Stop). Hapless Sergey, whose battered body turns up one night in a Sagaponack street shortly after he retains Jackie, was involved in an unequal battle with his sister-in-law, Eunice Wolsonowicz, over the house he and his wife, Elizabeth, shared until her death. Eunice and Elizabeth's family tree contains some pretty twisted limbs, and Jackie, who has limited respect for the speed of the law, presses her own investigation even after someone runs her off the road. Readers should be prepared for some shocks as body parts from an old hit-and-run victim occasionally pop up. While Knopf offers a vivid setting, sharp characterizations and devious plotting, Jackie's starring role doesn't entirely compensate for the bit part played by Sam, hitherto the series' lead character. (Jan.)

In MWA Grand Master Kaminsky's so-so 16th Porfiry Rostnikov novel (after 2008's People Who Walk in Darkness), the chief inspector of Russia's Office of Special Investigations pursues a serial killer, the Bitsevsky Maniac, named for the Moscow park in whose vicinity many of his elderly victims have been found bludgeoned to death with a hammer. Rostnikov stakes out the park in the hopes of attracting the killer's attention. Meanwhile, the chief inspector's colleagues, who include Rostnikov's son, Iosef, deal with unrelated crimes, such as tracking down a boxing champion who's suspected of murdering his wife and his sparring partner. These subplots, combined with an early reveal of the maniac's identity, lessen the suspense. In addition, Rostnikov is a lot less complex character than another Russian cop trying to maintain his honesty in a corrupt society, Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko. Sadly, the prolific Kaminsky died October 9, 2009. (Jan.)

When a swashbuckling stranger shows up at Count Raimon VI's chateau in May 1205 claiming to be the count's hitherto unknown brother in Gordon's engaging eighth Fools' Guild mystery (after 2008's The Moneylender of Toulouse), Toulouse's ruler taps one of his court's best minds to investigate—Theophilos the fool. A jester by trade only, Theophilos will need every bit of his considerable wit to solve a conundrum that turns increasingly treacherous after a flame-haired beauty is found slain in her brothel boudoir, the count's putative sibling still asleep beside her. Theophilos will also need crucial assists from his partners in crime solving, including his bewitching wife, Claudia—a duke's daughter equally adept with riposte or rapier—and their scarily precocious 12-year-old apprentice, Helga. With characters as entertaining as these, the long-running appeal of Gordon's series proves no mystery at all. (Jan.)

In Colley's featherweight eighth mystery to feature New Orleans maid Charlotte LaRue (after 2008's Wash and Die), Charlotte must keep tidy a Garden District mansion being used as a set for a movie starring legendary actor Hunter Lansky and hot rising actress Angel Martinique. Filming's barely underway when Charlotte discovers Angel's two-timing boyfriend stabbed to death with a letter opener, which turns out to be covered with Angel's fingerprints. Angel's chauffeur asks Charlotte to investigate, and the two head to Oakdale, Miss., to learn what they can about Angel's early life. Charlotte's PI boyfriend, Louis Thibodeaux, can't help because he's out of town, but Charlotte, a housecleaner's answer to Jessica Fletcher, has learned that cheese graters, bleach and buckets can come in handy in her sleuthing work. Charlotte is a sweetie, but this conventional cozy series could use some extra-strength twists to give it more heft. (Jan.)

Set in 1546, Herring's captivating debut depicts the future Elizabeth I as a keen and shrewd detective. A killer is stalking London, beheading young women and dressing their bodies in nuns' clothes. When one of the princess's own ladies becomes a victim, the 12-year-old Elizabeth, daughter of the now failing Henry VIII, joins with her friends Simon Maldon, a physician's son, and Hugh Bellows, the captain of the king's Welsh Guard, in the hunt for the murderer, though they're careful to keep Elizabeth's involvement a secret from her father. Filled with colorful and believable characters from all classes of society, the story moves swiftly to its dramatic conclusion. Fans of historical mysteries will look forward eagerly to the next in the series. (Jan.)

British author Gilbert improves on the plotting and the Watsonian narrative voice in his second pastiche collection (after 2007's The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes). Each of the seven stories takes its inspiration from one of the tantalizing references in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures to exploits Watson never got around to publishing, such as the disappearance of James Phillimore, who returned home for an umbrella and was never seen again. While the lead story, “Baron Maupertuis,” offers an anticlimactic ending to the sleuth's duel with Professor Moriarty, Gilbert hits his stride with the clever “Adventure of the Cutter Alicia,” in which a man is incarcerated for insanity after claiming to have viewed the vessel sail into a patch of mist and vanish. While not pitch-perfect like the work of Donald Thomas or Denis Smith, this is a solid and respectable addition to the ranks of faithful emulations of the Doyle originals. (Jan.)

Ghosts, disaffected wives, deserted towns, obsessive journalists and children who never existed haunt the pages of this stunning, elegant and frightful anthology of “literary horror” assembled by Stoker nominee Tremblay and World Fantasy Award–winning Wallace (Bandersnatch). There are no chainsaw massacres in these 14 exquisite tales, which range from Steve Berman's hilarious Kafkaesque “Kinder,” about an infestation of German children, to Stephen Graham Jones's “The Ones Who Got Away,” a riveting account of a kidnapping gone wrong. The most outstanding piece is Lavie Tidhar's “Set Down This,” a devastating story of YouTube videos, the Iraq War and the unknown lives on both sides of the conflict. Only a few weak links, like Geoffrey H. Goodwin's lusty but clichéd “Jonquils Bloom,” mar this deliciously creepy book of horrors that prove all the more terrifying for their everyday nature. (Jan.)

Danger and excitement leap off every page of this fast-paced paranormal romance set in the world of 2009's Immortal Danger. A shape-shifter who can't shift and a psychic who dreams about death live in the body of Erin Jerome, who's trying to maintain a normal life as a Louisiana assistant DA while avoiding the secret world of shifters, demons, vampires, witches and djinn. When a shape-shifting psychotic starts stalking Erin, sending her gifts of dead bodies in the crazed hope of luring her to his side, bounty-hunting shifter Jude Donovan vows to keep her safe. Erin wonders whether, like her shifter mother, she carries the seeds of madness and fears that when Jude learns the truth about her he'll turn from her in disgust. Well-crafted characters and nail-biting suspense and passion elevate this tale above the glutted paranormal market. (Jan.)

Card combines flag-waving, political diatribe and Christian fervor in this bombastic sequel to 2007's Empire. The young American Empire is confronted with its first major crisis since the Progressive War: the appearance in Africa of a highly communicable and lethal disease. America quarantines the entire continent, while pompous President Torrent dispatches an elite team of supersoldiers to help slow the disease's spread. Young Mark Malich is compelled by his Christian principles to volunteer to help the benighted African natives, but he winds up in a Nigerian hospital targeted for destruction by malevolent Sudanese soldiers, leading to questions about Torrent's true goals. An evil dictator is named Idi De Gaulle, the bad guys machine-gun live babies, and FOX News gets prominent placement, but the only people likely to pick this up are those who share Card's politics, rendering subtlety less necessary. (Jan.)

Henderson's pulpy debut tries to cover up its flaws with a fast-paced narrative, but there's no hiding the emotionally distant characters, plot missteps and sketchy setting. Professor Piers Knight, a curator of paranormal artifacts at the Brooklyn Museum, is introducing his new summer intern, Bridget Elkins, to an incorrectly described New York City, when they are caught up in the efforts of astrally projected thieves, a fire elemental and a Syrian terrorist to steal the mysterious Dream Stone. Pyrotechnics abound, with a double climax featuring a military battle against a bigger elemental and a ghost-aided confrontation with interdimensional evil in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Stock characterizations, a multiply implausible plot and stilted faux Noo Yawk dialogue (“We're talkin' four goddamned dead bodies. Blown to mother-humpin' little gooey bits!”) give a grade-C movie feel. (Jan.)

In this emotionally gripping first novel, Harper Adams, a Monitor capable of reading people's emotions, identifies enemies of the Confederation of the Willing, a nasty dystopian state reminiscent of 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale. Like everyone else, she has a “slate” implanted in her neck, primed to execute her if she utters one of the many words that have been outlawed or “Red-Listed” by the government. Pushed to revolt when her daughter's name, Veracity, is Red-Listed, Harper is recruited by the resistance and becomes their secret weapon. Bynum makes her protagonist's emotional turmoil painfully believable and creates a number of other interesting and thorny characters, but her plot is occasionally incoherent. Though the cartoonishly powerful Confederacy is never entirely convincing as a workable totalitarian state, its opponents also seem too quixotic and undermanned to fight it as successfully as they do. (Jan.)

Historical romance fans will celebrate Milan's powerhouse debut, which comes with a full complement of humor, characterization, plot and sheer gutsiness. The setting is 1836 London, where fortune teller Madame Esmerelda, née Jenny Keeble, plies her dubious trade at the fringes of respectability. She draws the ire of Gareth Carhart, marquess of Blakely, when his young cousin and heir falls under Madame Esmerelda's spell. Socially inept scientist Gareth wants to prove that Jenny is a fraud, leading to some delightful nonsense as Jenny inventively complicates the terms of Gareth's “proof,” but the more these two tangle, the more they come to see each other's attractive qualities among the flaws. If too much psychoanalysis sometimes gets read into a single heated gaze, such freshman flaws barely distract from the joy of watching the characters develop amid delightful plot twists. (Jan.)

The cosmology of this battle between good and evil approaches Saturday morning cartoon levels of unsophistication; the mystery could be solved by Scooby-Doo; and the big-breasted bombshells and hunky men are cookie-cutter romance standard, but Myles's debut somehow sustains an extraordinary, confectionery appeal. After suffering a vampire bite and enjoying passionate sex with a fallen angel, mousy museum curator Jackie Brighton is transformed into a gorgeous, sexually ravenous succubus. Guided by porn star succubus Remy Summore, Jackie is drawn into the search for a magical halo and a love triangle with fallen angel Noah and vampire bouncer Zane. Myles manages to be cleverly hilarious while making all her jokes work for the plot. These particular characters may not be deep enough to hold up through the planned sequel, but Myles's sexy, wacky humor is definitely something to watch. (Jan.)

In Ware's profanity-saturated debut, Dr. Elliott Drake and his friends Quent and Wyatt are trapped underground and knocked unconscious when the immortal Strangers arrive to destroy human civilization. The trio awaken after 50 years, unaged, and escape the cave to find that two of them now have odd powers and everything familiar has vanished. After six months of wandering amid desolation, they rescue some teens from an attack of quasi-humans with the help of Jade, a mysterious woman on horseback. The teens lead the men to their city of Envy (pop. 2,000), formerly Las Vegas, where Jade draws Elliott into romance as well as efforts to understand and dispel the Strangers' powers. Ware creates a convincing and chaotic world, complete with ocean, elephants and tigers on the Nevada terrain, but the story seems too sparse to fill the planned three books. (Jan.)

Mosby (The 50/50 Killer) takes readers into the most sinister neighborhoods of a crowded British city in this dark thriller. Former police officer Martin is seeking the murderer of Alison Sheldon. A horrific video turns up with details of the brutal killing, but Martin's partner, Sean, has disappeared, hampering the investigation. Soon Martin finds himself hunting the associates of criminal Timothy Hartley, murdered by Martin and his fellow officers. The clues evolve in a slow and sinister manner as Martin discovers why Sean is missing and how Sheldon and other victims are connected to Hartley. Personal interactions set this tale apart from other thrillers, as Martin's fractured relationship with his estranged wife and his continued obsession with a female cop run throughout the novel and play a major part in the surprising conclusion. (Jan.)

Having already established his reputation as the world's leading comics journalist, Sacco (Safe Area Gorazde) is now making a serious case to be considered one of the world's top journalists, period. His newest undertaking is a bracing quest to uncover the truth about what happened in two Gaza Strip towns in 1956, when aftershocks from the Sinai campaign may have resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. Sacco first came across the stories during research in 2001 and was shocked to discover that, but for one brief mention, the incidents had never been fully investigated. The resulting book is a blow-by-blow retelling of how Sacco, on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, embedded himself in Gaza and set about interviewing every witness he could find who had been in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah on those fateful days. Sacco's art is alternately epic and intimate, but he exceeds himself in the scope of his ambition (particularly in one sequence that shows in vivid terms how desert refugee camps from 1948 turned into the teeming slums of today). But it's his exacting and harrowing interviews that make this book an invaluable and wrenching piece of journalism. (Dec.)

This reboot of Motter's groundbreaking retro-future cult favorite from the '80s for the 2000s comes up with an odd mixed bag. When Radiant City's mood-soothing “psychetecture” starts eliciting assorted mental and emotional disorders in its inhabitants, the local government decides to raze the metropolis and build anew, a plan carried out by giant robots that kill a respected sect of architects. But the reconstruction can only spell a horrible outcome, so the city's mysterious designer, Mister X, returns after having disappeared years earlier and endeavors to retrieve his original blueprints while eluding the corrupt government, vicious gangsters and the police, who think he may be the serial killer who's leaving a trail of bodies. The narrative moves at a measured pace and at times reads like a dream of a place and era that simultaneously never was and is yet to be, the art a cold yet alluring fusion of the film noir aesthetic and a push-button future as imagined by the likes of film directors Fritz Lang or William Cameron Menzies. Motter certainly delivers in terms of mood and visuals, but the end result comes up curiously uninvolving. (Nov.)

Just about the last thing that the comics world needs (apart from more action/horror mashups) is another dry and inspiration-free autobiography—thankfully, Alec shows with thrilling certitude that quotidian observations make just as great comic art as the most action-packed fiction. This monster of a book (billed as “the definitive edition”) contains a life's worth of Campbell's previously published Alec MacGarry stories. Running from 1981 to the present, these witty and thoughtful pieces (etched with the prolific Campbell's typically scratchy impatience) show Campbell's alter ego progressing from irresponsible Scottish pub crawler to striving graphic novelist to responsible and reasonably successful Aussie father. Along the way we can trace Campbell's rise from penny-pinching obscurity to relative fame, sketching an engaging portrait of the comics community. Though best known for his Alan Moore collaboration From Hell, Campbell shows in his MacGarry stories a breezy comic touch that can still flirt with darker topics of artistic responsibility and mortality without weighing down the narrative. The book can drag in its earlier, more minutely observed pages, but taken as a whole, delivers a life-size work, a great and epic comic documentary novel like no other. (Nov.)

The Wild West has always been the setting to examine what happens when humanity abandons its rules. And the werewolf is an ideal path to explore the mind of a person who loses all self-control. The natural connection between those two elements is only the starting point for this engaging, intricately crafted western horror series. As Colin MacGregor, a former Pinkerton's detective with a hidden past, arrives in the isolated town of Blest, Tex., his only goal is to catch a man with a price on his head. Soon he's hired to rescue a kidnapped girl, and events spiral into two more connected episodes of supernatural horror spread out across the landscape of the American West at the dawn of the industrial age. Gallaher adeptly layers elements from many mythologies to create a rich melting pot of mysticism matching the diversity of settlers in the towns where the stories take place. Ellis's strong artwork captures the mysterious, lawless atmosphere, rising to the occasion whenever the tale calls for the reader to be frightened or awed. (Oct.)

Rin-ne is the newest manga from Takahashi, creator of Ranma½ and Inuyasha, two of the most successful anime and manga series of all time. Sakura is a teenage girl who can see spirits due to a narrow escape from the wheel of death and reincarnation as a child. One day, her classroom is plagued by a ghost, and she meets Rinne, a living boy filling the role of a shinigami—a supernatural being who guides spirits to their rest. Poor and alone on Earth, he tries to cadge meals and scam a living in between dealing with unquiet spirits. Despite potential melodramatic fodder, both characters are too practical and matter-of-fact for theatrics. Instead, Rin-ne tells the wry and funny adventures of two lonely kids becoming friends against a background of ghost stories that are more melancholy than frightening. Rin-ne is not the most profound of comics nor is it the most visually stunning, but it is a satisfying and heartfelt story, with promise of greater things to come as the tale unfolds. (Oct.)