September Publications

Close on the heels of Volume 1 (Forecasts, May 14), The Mike Hammer Collection: Volume 2 collects another three Mickey Spillane novels: One Lonely Night, The Big Kill and Kiss Me, Deadly. Introduced by multiple Shamus- and Edgar-winner Lawrence Block, the collection features Spillane at his finest (i.e., most vulgar, wise-talking, cynical, noir; most B-movie-poetic, etc.). The first story begins, "Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this." Except, of course, our friend Mr. Hammer; readers will feel compelled to follow. (NAL, $15 paper 528p ISBN 0-451-20425-5)

In fresh, inventive prose, the delightfully and maddeningly equivocal narrator of The Impossibly, Laird Hunt's first novel, indirectly relates his circuitous story. He is some sort of freelance criminal, but, by inviting the reader into select minute details of his life, the narrator keeps the specifics out of focus until, incrementally, he reveals his line of work, the danger he risks and the duplicity of nearly all his acquaintances. (Coffee House, $23.95 210p ISBN 1-56689-117-5)

Amid farmworker strikes and illicit love affairs in California's San Joaquin Valley during the 1960s, Coy Lee Tuttle, a grape-grower's son, hunts down his sister's suspected killer, a protester from the ranks of Cesar Chavez. Coy Lee undergoes a political coming of age as he discovers a devastating secret about his family in Bonnie Hearn's Huelga House, another debut novel. (Salvo [www.salvopress.com], $14.95 paper 178p ISBN 1-930486-21-9)

Murder at Walden Pond: A Steve Asher Mystery, Al Blanchard's first book, introduces series hero Asher, a well-intentioned middle school teacher accused of murdering his student's sister, Susan Oliver. Lies, multiple motives, break-ins, another murder and the Oliver family's mysterious ways keep the police and Asher guessing until the very end, when Asher's search for the killer puts him in mortal danger. (Salvo [www.salvopress.com], $14.95 paper 208p ISBN 1-930486-28-6)

In Off the Bench, former litigator Bruce Kreisman's debut book, Chicago private eye Martin Bronk (also a former lawyer) is hired by a judge to track down a missing clerk. When a judge and a lawyer turn up dead, Bronk must ask difficult questions about his friends and colleagues, risking his life in the process. (Salvo [www.salvopress.com], $14.95 paper 208p ISBN 1-9304-8619-7)

An eccentric stranger calling herself Miss Woman comes to Victoria, a small Southern town, singing the blues and bewildering the locals in Miss Woman, Ann Vaughan Richards's first novel. When a petulant Victoria woman is murdered, all eyes turn to the newcomer for lack of a better scapegoat, but our guileless narrator Willie Kay unmasks the real killer, and the mysterious Miss Woman in the meantime. (Livingston/Univ. of West Alabama, $26 236p ISBN 0-942979-77-X)

Cannes is a city of "dreams and sleaze"—and, it turns out, brutal serial murders, in Jane Jakeman's (Let There Be Blood) Death in the South of France. Charlie Cashel is called away from his tumultuous life in England to identify his sister's body as Cecil Galant, the new city magistrate, leads the disturbing investigation. (Allison & Busby [dist. IPM], $24.95 272p ISBN 0-7490-0555-6)

Plant pathologist Claire Sharples unearths a skeleton by a river in California's Central Valley, and becomes embroiled in a mystery that began 50 years ago. Series heroine Claire becomes acquainted with the high-stakes cotton and oil industries as she investigates the skeleton's story in The Tumbleweed Murders: A Claire Sharples Botanical Mystery by Rebecca Rothenberg (The Bulrush Murders), completed by Taffy Cannon (Guns and Roses) after Rothenberg's death. (Perseverance/John Daniel, $12.95 paper 252p ISBN 1-880284-43-X)

In Keepers: A Port Silva Mystery, sixth in Janet LaPierre's (Baby Mine) series, mother and daughter PIs Patience and Verity Mackellar, two new characters, search for a missing child. An undercover investigation in an insular religious community on California's Lost Coast provides a fitting background for the strange—and dangerous—goings-on that the Mackellars encounter. (Perseverance/John Daniel, $12.95 paper 252p ISBN 1-880284-44-8)

Fifteen Jeffrey Rand and Leila Gaad stories appear in The Old Spies Club: And Other Rand Intrigues, by Edward D. Hoch (The Spy Who Read Latin and Other Stories). Rand, a semi-retired British espionage agent, and his wife Leila, an archeologist, embark on various and sundry Cold War adventures in Cairo, Moscow, London, New York and elsewhere. (Crippen & Landru [www.crippenlandru.com], $42 signed by author/$17 paper 242p ISBN 1-885941-59-5/-60-9)

Overkill: A Maggie Ryan Mystery, second in Susan McBride's (And Then She Was Gone) series, lands Detective Ryan in the middle of another murder mystery—this time it's a school bus shooting, and the victim is a young girl. The victim's tentative mother, who has put a restraining order on her husband and taken up with a belligerent new boyfriend, seems to be keeping information from the police, maybe to protect her daughter's killer. (Mayhaven [www.mayhavenpublishing.com], $14.95 paper 256p ISBN 1-878044-87-7)

Detective McKenna is hot on the trail of a murderous arsonist in Tahoe Blowup: An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller by Todd Borg (Tahoe Deathfall). When the killer kidnaps Owen's girlfriend, intending to burn her and hundreds of other people to death, Owen and his dog Spot have to brave the gun-toting arsonist and a devastating forest fire to save her life. (Thriller [www.thrillerpress.com], $16.95 paper 320p ISBN 1-931296-12-X)