August Publications

The multitalented Ray Sipherd (the creator of WNET's All Things Considered, he's won three Emmys for TV writing) serves up his third Jonathan Wilder mystery, in which the handsome birder, who's doing fieldwork in Arizona, uncovers a tale of ornithological superstition and human smuggling in The Devil's Hawk. Mexicans believe the titular bird is a harbinger of death, but a different Hawk—the leader of a ruthless gang of smugglers who leave their illegal immigrant charges in the desert to die—is much more dangerous; Jon, aided by pretty border patrol agent Max Montoya, decides to smuggle himself over the border to trap the mysterious El Halcón. (St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95 272p ISBN 0-312-24428-2)

In Blood Lies: A Dido Hoare Mystery, Marianne MacDonald's sleuthing antiquarian book dealer—and self-described "city girl"—turns her attention to smalltown crime when a visit to her old friend Lizzy Waring (née Harper) reveals the proper Waring family's dark past. As Lizzy's parents-in-law go insane, her husband gets dodgy and her brother-in-law returns from prison, it becomes clear that an old manslaughter charge, a valuable missing first edition and a new death are all somehow connected, and that it's up to the enterprising and likable single mom to figure out how. (St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95 272p ISBN 0-312-28305-9)

Tough-talking copper Gus Carson has been trying to walk the straight and narrow ever since he got back to Chicago after a tour in WWII, but a visit to a whorehouse proves his undoing when he kills a man who's just murdered a john and his gal and gets suspended from the force. Steve Monroe's classic hard-boiler follows Carson through the city's underbelly in pursuit of a kidnapped swindler (who's also on the payroll of a political mover and shaker) before he uncovers the truth in a veritable bloodbath in '46, Chicago. (Talk Miramax, $22.95 272p ISBN 0-7868-6731-0)

When "vision of loveliness" Stella Seco—now known as Vanessa Moss—appears in charming Jewish gumshoe Benny Cooperman's Ontario office, it's not, unfortunately, a social call, even though they went to school together. Because a friend wearing Vanessa's clothing was murdered in Vanessa's house, the gorgeous head of entertainment at the National Television Corporation believes that someone's out to kill her and wants Benny to protect her—and that she's one of the prime suspects in the murder is the least of Benny's problems in Howard Engel's hard-to-resist The Cooperman Variations: A Benny Cooperman Mystery. (Overlook, $24.95 279p ISBN 1-58567-233-5)

A month before the mass market edition of his bestseller Hope to Die hits shelves, whodunit Grand Master Lawrence Block will come out with Enough Rope—in Block's words, a "huge doorstop of a thing"—a collection of 83 stories spanning a career that began nearly five decades ago. With early tales (1957's "You Can't Lose") and recent ones ("Terrible Tommy Terhune"), not to mention plenty featuring series heroes Martin Ehrengraf, Matthew Scudder and Keller, this compendium of sharply written short fiction will delight Block's many fans, and likely earn him new ones. (Morrow, $29.95 896p ISBN 0-06-018890-1)

Replete with photographs and reproductions—of manuscript pages, dust jackets, movie posters and advertisements—not to mention contemporary reviews, interviews, excerpts and biographical investigations, Hardboiled Mystery Writers takes a behind-the-gritty-streets look at the lives and times of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald. Matthew J. Bruccoli (who's an English professor and F. Scott Fitzgerald expert) and Richard Layman (The Letters of Dashiell Hammett) offer a slick reference book that's informative, highly readable ("the poor SOB was never happy," they say of Chandler, in true hard-boiled style) and a must-have for all devotees of the genre. (Carroll & Graf, $22 paper 324p ISBN 0-7867-1029-2)