Realism isn't the strong suit of Edgar-winner Kipps's second police procedural featuring NYPD Det. Conor Bard (after 2009's Hell's Kitchen Homicide). Bard, who still hopes his music career will become viable enough to enable him to leave the force, interrupts a gig to respond to a high-profile murder scene. Someone has slit the throat of "stunningly beautiful" Israeli diamond dealer Zivah Gavish in her Manhattan apartment, leaving dozens of diamonds scattered across her body "like a galaxy of stars in a night sky." Suspects include a South African cop, Hendrik Kruger, who used to belong to a special police unit known as the Scorpions; and a fellow diamond dealer, Stanley Silberman, who hoped to have more than a professional relationship with the victim. Bard must also navigate having an attractive woman as his new partner. Other clichés include a serendipitous opportunity for Bard's music to hit the big time and a torrid affair with a witness. Readers will find few plot surprises. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

James, critically acclaimed author of the series the Bowers Files, sends new chills down the spine in his newest suspense thriller, told from various points of view and centering on FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers's criminology and geospatial tracking of serial killers. When a prominent congressman's daughter is murdered, seemingly unconnected crimes become evidence of a heinous game played by two people who have the same things coursing through their veins as their victims and the cops trying to catch them: love and hate. James packs the narrative with ethical dilemmas and subplots involving abortion and medical research ("It would have saved us all a lot of trouble if your mother had just gone ahead with the abortion"). The novel moves swiftly, with punchy dialogue but gruesome scenes. Readers must be ready to stomach the darkest side of humanity and get into the minds of serial killers to enjoy this master storyteller at the peak of his game. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but the black leather–wearing black sheep of a boisterous Midwestern Jewish clan never figured her best friend would actually leap into her backyard. Photographer Rachel happily trades her suburban Chicago roots—distant doctor dad, meddling mom, doctors-in-training younger brothers, and an extended family of dictatorial elders—for the boho life in New York City, and though she longs to revel in the edgy art world where her idol, Elizabeth—daughter of a famed and famously drunk Life photographer—was raised, Elizabeth can't shed the trappings fast enough for the "normal" life Rachel shuns. The gimmick is clever, but Elizabeth's transformation from art world orphan to suburban yenta seems unlikely at best. Luckily, there's more to this hip tale of yearning than her transformation, and Shapiro (Speed Shrinking) champions the small asides, the stubborn secrets, and the unconditional affection of a big, complicated family to forge a connection with readers. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Painter and short story writer Ruby debuts with a haunting, lyrical novel of love, loss, and second chances set in upstate New York and greatly informed by the Seneca Indians, whose lore imbues the book with spirituality. In 1988, the Ellis children set out on a stormy night in a canoe borrowed from the Songos next door to escape their brutish father. Luke, the youngest, drowns, and his older sisters are never the same: Melanie turns to drugs while Maya suffers bouts of catatonia. Years later, Grant Songo, 32, returns to his family's lake cabin after separating from his wife. While running in the woods, a wounded wolf trails him, and when Echo O'Connell, Grant's teenage flame, crashes her car to avoid hitting the wolf, she and Grant reconnect and are drawn into the mystery of the recently missing Melanie. Many locals believe Melanie's back on drugs, but Lion, the father of her baby boy, is convinced she's in danger. These characters face real and psychological fears to endure the transformative experiences needed to become whole in a worthwhile story filled with mysticism and symbolism. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Veteran Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal) shows once again he's a master of the political thriller by taking a simple but completely original idea and turning it into a compelling story. The unnamed Obama-like U.S. president, disgusted by the horrors wrought by illegal drug trafficking, decides to bring the entire weight and resources of the federal government against the international cocaine trade. He first declares drug traders and their cartels to be terrorists, subjecting them to new and extensive legal procedures, then he brings in ex-CIA director Paul Devereaux to head the team that will implement the effort. Devereaux, known as the Cobra from his operations days, is old school—smart, ruthless, unrelenting, and bestowed by the president with free rein to call in any arm of the government. Forsyth lays out how it would all work, and readers will follow eagerly along, always thinking, yes, why don't they do this in real life? The answer to that question lies at the heart of this forceful, suspenseful, intelligent novel. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

A shocking letter from India sends middle-aged Vinita Patil reeling in Bantwal's (The Dowry Bride) absorbing latest. Living in New Jersey, contentedly married for almost 25 years to Girish, a mechanical engineer with whom she has a daughter, Vinita learns that the illegitimate child she believed was stillborn in India, is alive, suffering from myeloid leukemia, and desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant. Vinita's brother, Vishal, who'd orchestrated the deception and arranged for the baby's adoption, fesses up that Vinta's son, Rohit Barve, is a chemistry professor at Shivraj College, the college where Vinita met Rohit's playboy father, Som Kori, who'd refused to marry her. Vinita and Som's coming from different linguistic groups vying for control of the border town of Palagum, made their union impossible. After Vinita finally meets her grown son, she's disturbed to learn that Som and Rohit's adoptive father are still embroiled in the violent territorial conflict, a situation that adds suspense to the story. This inspiring testament to a mother's enduring love makes for a fascinating tale and provides a window into an equally fascinating culture. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

This bizarre romp from German novelist Maier, his first to be translated into English, tells an (intentionally) incomprehensible story about some ambiguously subversive goings-on in the tiny South Tyrol town of Klausen. At the heart of it all, apparently, is Josef Gasser, a tormented young man with frustrated aspirations to transcend the stifling atmosphere of his village. When political unrest stirs over noise pollution from the nearby highway, a series of incidents ensues—midnight assaults, anonymous fliers posted all over town that denigrate the town and its inhabitants, a police raid on an abandoned castle occupied by Albanian immigrants—but how these odd occurrences hang together, if indeed they do, never becomes clear: perhaps Josef has a central role. Perhaps not. Maier pieces this shaggy dog tale together from conflicting and possibly fabricated testimonials of various suspicious Klauseners, leading to a murky climax. A slightly awkward translation can make this already confusing story even harder to follow, but readers into the bizarre and playful will enjoy this amusing and somewhat sinister satire. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In De Sa's debut, a father and son narrate a revelatory, if disjointed, story spanning two generations of Portuguese-Canadian immigrants. Escaping the abuse and overbearing expectations of his mother as well as a pedophile priest, young Manuel Rebelo flees his small Portuguese village on a fishing boat in 1954, finding his promised land in St. John, Newfoundland. Through a number of trials, including a near-drowning at sea, betrayal by his rescuers, and the threat of deportation, Manuel pursues the ghost of his father (who died at sea) and an apparition Manuel calls Big Lips, a fish who appears in times of need and contemplation. Leaping ahead to the 1970s, readers find Manuel married with two children, and living in Toronto's Portuguese neighborhood. From there, Manuel's six-year-old son, Antonio, takes over the narration, precociously chronicling his father's descent into alcoholism, disillusionment, and bitterness. The sudden change in narration underscores the novel's general sense of disorientation; readers will likely find Manuel's journey from victimized altar boy to villainous father jarring, as if, in the confusion, De Sa left out part of the story. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

At the start of Carver's weak third Capt. Jay McCaulay thriller (after Back with Vengeance), MI5 agent Max Blake, who pursued Jay romantically in the previous book, appears at the house of Jay's current boyfriend, Bristol cop Tom Sutton. Bleeding from an arm wound, Max persuades Jay to meet a good friend of his, Sol Neill, in Paris the next day. Jay meets Sol as planned, then witnesses his murder in an alley, a killing later blamed on Max, who has unwittingly involved Jay with a mysterious organization known as the Garrison. The Garrison's tentacles appear to be everywhere, leaving Jay, Max, Tom, and a few close friends exposed to threats and retaliation. With Max's reappearance in her life, Jay finds herself once again torn between Max and Tom. Relying on rather heavy-handed melodrama, Carver fails to engage the reader as she has in earlier novels like Blood Junction (written as Caroline Carver) that explored issues as well as bogeymen. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

At the heart of Gardner's outstanding fourth novel featuring Boston PD detective Warren (after The Neighbor) are some very sick kids, notably Lucy, a nine-year-old feral girl who self-mutilates when any attention is given to her, and Evan, an eight-year-old boy who during fits threatens to kill his mother. D.D gets involved after two grisly family annihilations lead to the locked-down pediatric psych ward in Cambridge that specializes in Lucy's and Evan's types of hard case. When a child is too sick and the parent can no longer handle care, the child ends up in the acute care facility under the tutelage of pediatric psych nurse Danielle, the lone survivor of her own family bloodbath. Coincidence? That's for D.D. to figure out—in the midst of a budding romance with police academy professor Alex Wilson and infuriating encounters with Andrew Lightfoot, resident "woo-woo expert" (that's cop talk for psychic), who works in tandem with the hospital. Plenty of red herrings keep readers guessing, but Gardner always plays fair in this tight and consistently engaging page-turner. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/21/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink