DeFelice's third thriller featuring maverick FBI Agent Andy Fisher (after Threat Level Black) features neither a compelling storyline nor a memorable lead. In the "near present," Fisher, who occupies a unique niche in the Bureau as the "one-man problem-solver" for the director, ignores an email from a former girlfriend, Kathy Feder, and lives to regret it. While he's otherwise engaged at a bar, Feder is gunned down in her hotel room. Tragically, Feder's last communiqué is opened too late; Fisher learns after her murder that she wanted his help to deal with something "terrible," and dedicates himself to tracking down her killer. She had been working as the vice-president for finance for Icarus Sun Works, an energy concern whose Helios project aimed to capture the sun's energy via satellite and beam it down to earth. The threat that innovation poses to other players in the energy business supplies an obvious motive for her murder, and Fisher travels the country to bring Feder some justice. The author keeps things moving, but the lead's quirks aren't enough to sustain interest. (Feb.)

Blake's newest (after The Killings of Stanley Ketchel) is an immersive and complex epic set in New England, Mexico, and the American Southwest and spanning three generations of the Wolfe family, a rough-and-tumble clan sired in 1828 by pirate captain Roger Blake Wolfe, whose execution shortly after the birth of his twin boys, Samuel and John Roger, starts the book off with a violent start. The brothers' paths separate when Samuel accidentally kills a watchman and signs up for the Army under an alias to avoid prosecution, and John Roger goes to Dartmouth, from whence he graduates with a law degree. Both brothers end up in Mexico--Samuel deserts the Army and John Roger accepts a position as a sales agent at his wife's uncle's trading company--, but neither can escape the curse of the Wolfe blood, which persists across generations and geography. Murder, politics, and illegitimate children fuel this engrossing and wonderfully realized saga. The familial relationships are deep and sometimes difficult to trace (though a Wolfe genealogy at the beginning of the book helps a little), but Blake methodically moves his narrative forward to the tragic (but inevitable) conclusion. While he reveals little of his protagonists' inner lives, readers will be curious to see what tragedies befall the Wolfes and whether the family will be redeemed. (Jan.)

In irregular warfare consultant Hamlet's debut, the year is 1978 and over a million planes, tanks, and jeeps have mysteriously disappeared from various National Guard enclaves across the country, only to reappear at other previously defunct National Guard facilities. This hard-to-believe premise drives a rapid-fire story of cat-and-mouse between the CIA and the Right Guard, a rogue military group that the Agency believes is responsible for the relocation of the armaments. 38-year-old CIA operative Eric Brent is tasked with gaining the trust of Right Guard member Rake Benson and infiltrating the group, which eventually leads him to Deacon Malway, the elderly fanatic leader who dreams of taking over the United States and putting it under martial law in order to tailor the fabric of American life to his liking. The novel shifts rapidly between the efforts of Deacon's group to implement its goal, and those of Eric and his support team to thwart it. Countless new one-dimensional characters are introduced at such a dizzying speed that it's difficult to keep their loyalties straight. The novel's multitude of details lend authenticity to the story (such as epigraphic real-life newspaper clippings at the beginnings of many chapters), but their sheer volume impedes the flow of the novel. (Jan.)

The sequel to Susan Jane Bigelow's outstanding Broken finds guilt-ridden superhero Sky Ranger on the run from the fascist Reformist government he served for years. His motley crew includes an Earth exile with a secret, and a young extrahuman with extraordinary powers who the government wants for a nefarious purpose. Along the way, Penny Silverwing--formerly known as Broken, and Sky Ranger's former lover--finds her path crossing his again. Multiple extrahumans and refugees are saved from the government during the escape while a little surprise looms before another mission is handed down. Filled with hairpin plot turns, breathtaking escapes, compelling characters, and a profound sense of humanity, this installment of the Extrahuman series expands upon an already fascinating universe and leaves the reader hungry for a third book. (Jan.)

Brett's second mystery set in 1920s England (after 2011's Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King's Daughter) starts off as a passable Wodehouse imitation, but soon grows tiresome with its relentless wordplay, banter, and speech mannerisms evocative of Bertie Wooster (e.g., "Oh, trucky-trockle. Well, me old poached egg, tell me what your notion is zappity-ping"). The over-the-top plot finds the dim Honourable Devereux Lyminster (aka Blotto) and his brainy sister, Honoria (aka Twinks), investigating a murder that leads them to a sinister gang straight from the pulps, the League of the Crimson Hand. Wodehouse's genius lay in pairing memorably goofy characters with complex, rigorously constructed plots that maximized the farcical potential of misunderstandings and missteps. Brett's inability to do so renders this a slight diversion rather than a genuinely memorable comic mystery. (Jan.)

O'Hara makes only minimal changes to the plot of Stoker's Dracula, while lifting scenes and dialogue wholesale from it, in this subpar pastiche that unconvincingly introduces the supernatural into the hyper-rational Baker Street universe. Essentially Holmes takes over Van Helsing's role after Watson's niece, Mina, asks for help locating her vanished husband, Janos Svbado, the Jonathan Harker stand-in, who's unaccounted for after a visit to Dracula's castle. Holmes and Watson journey to Transylvania, where they have the exact same encounters with wolves and a mysterious coachman that Harker did in the original, before meeting the vampire-king himself. Unlike authors like Loren Estleman or Fred Saberhagen, O'Hara doesn't even attempt to have Holmes wrestle with a phenomenon outside his experience, and implausibly has the great detective adopting the use of garlic and other wards against the undead without batting a deerstalker. Unfortunately, the best-written passages are lifted directly, and without attribution, from Doyle's short story "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," and the author rushes the final showdown between Holmes and Dracula, robbing it of any dramatic power. (Nov.)

This inspired volume of original stories celebrates the 25th anniversary of mystery bookstore Once Upon a Crime and the 10th anniversary of the Minneapolis store’s annual Write of Spring author gathering. Outstanding selections from the 34 contributors, who offer a heavily regional diet of tales set in Minnesota or Wisconsin, include David Housewright’s “Obsessive Behavior” and William Kent Krueger’s “Luck.” In Libby Fischer Hellmann’s fine “Capital Partners,” two women find a way to deal with troubled marriages. Bruce Rubenstein revisits St. Paul’s storied era of détente between cops and criminals in “Johnny’s Johnson,” an amusing tale about one of John Dillinger’s visits. Bookending the collection are two previously unpublished Carl Wilcox stories by Harold Adams, whose last Wilcox novel, Lead, So I Can Follow, was published in 1999. Reed Farrel Coleman and Jon Jordan provide heartfelt tributes to store owners Schulze and Frovarp, winners of the 2011 MWA Raven Award, for their efforts on behalf of both authors and readers. (Apr.)

A blaze at a suburban London school takes on sinister overtones in Lupton’s superb follow-up to Sister (2010). During a sports day at the school of Grace Covey’s son, Adam, the building catches fire, and Grace races inside when she realizes that her 17-year-old daughter, Jenny, a temporary teaching assistant, has not emerged. Defying official sanctions, Det. Sgt. Sarah McBride, Grace’s sister-in-law, doggedly pursues the questions in the aftermath. These include the accusation that Adam set the blaze, though he’s traumatized from the fire and unable to speak; the possible roles of investors, staff, journalists, and fired employees; and an earlier poisoned pen campaign against Jenny. Unusually, the gravely injured Grace and Jenny are having out-of-body experiences, wandering the hospital and other places in search of the truth, as Jenny remembers little of the day’s events, and Grace is suspicious of Jenny’s boyfriend, Ivo, and her daughter’s other relationships. The uncommon but convincing narrative technique, adroit twists, and memorable characters combine to provide a wise and poignant portrait of a family confronted with malice and heartbreaking decisions. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown. (Apr.)

Present and past meld into an exploration of conflicting traditions in an impressive debut that shifts smoothly between 1920s Turkestan and present-day England. In 1923, Evangeline (Eva) English accompanies her fragile sister, Lizzie, on a missionary trip to the ancient Chinese-ruled Muslim city of Kashgar under the supervision of the stern Millicent Frost, who suspects, accurately, that Eva, with her prized bicycle—a “glorious, green BSA Lady’s Roadster”—and passion for writing, is more interested in adventure than proselytizing. Surprisingly (and disappointingly), Eva’s story is lacking in cycling and exciting exploits. In the present day, well-traveled but stuffy researcher Frieda Blakeman is startled by the appearance of both a letter deeming her the next-of-kin of a recently deceased woman, and Tayeb, an illegal Yemeni immigrant who takes refuge outside her London apartment. Though Frieda and Tayeb’s growing bond and the unfolding revelations of the modern story are more compelling than Eva’s frustratingly limited experiences and the unpleasantly stereotyped Millicent, Joinson has created in Frieda’s unusual history and the parallel struggles of Tayeb and Eva as outsiders and observers an intriguing window into the difficulties of those who attempt to reach across cultural barriers. Map. Agent: Rachel Calder, the Sayle Literary Agency. (June)

Although most of the characters in these nine immaculately crafted short stories share a common native land—Kerala in southern India—their range of emotions is brilliantly diverse. Yet they all feel adrift in an alien culture, no matter how much time they have spent in the West. James (Atlas of Unknowns) understands the nuances of emotional displacement. In the title story, retired grocer Hari Panicker has a “hollow feeling... sitting in the fading light of a foreign room,” the retirement home where his son has consigned him. James displays a comic bent in “The Scriptological Review,” where a nerdy American teenager, Vijay, mourns his dead father by making his mother’s life miserable with his obsessive focus on producing a journal of handwriting analysis. There is poignancy in Vijay’s deep-seated fear of the culture that drove his father to suicide. In the moving “Light & Luminous” a middle-aged teacher of Indian classical dance is forced to include her ungainly, dark-skinned grandniece in a talent contest, leading her to discover that she shares the girl’s misery. Only the final story, “Girl Marries Ghost,” in which a grieving young American widow enters a lottery to marry a dead man, misses the target that the other stories unerringly hit. Agent: Nicole Aragi, the Aragi Agency. (May 15)