In Agatha-finalist Bork's winning second Broken Vows mystery set in New York's Finger Lakes region (after 2009's For Better, for Murder), Jolene Parker and her police deputy husband, Ray, have survived near divorce, but may lose the infant daughter they hope to adopt, Noelle, because the bank-robbing fugitive birth mother, who called herself Abigail Bryce, was using a 17-year-old dead girl's identity, rendering all the adoption paperwork worthless. Jolene eventually catches up with the false Abigail in a parking lot, where she's holding a broken beer bottle over her dying boyfriend, who's bleeding from a neck wound. Meanwhile, Jolene must strive to keep her floundering sports car boutique and repair business afloat. When a millionaire summer resident promises a substantial finder's fee for tracking down a specific car for his wife's grandfather, the need for cash outweighs the weirdness of knowing the car will be used as the grandfather's coffin. The various plot lines wind neatly to a bittersweet conclusion. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

All the elements that have made Estleman one of the best hard-boiled writers of all time—just a notch below Chandler and Hammett—are present in these 32 short stories. Remarkably, he has kept his Detroit-based Amos Walker series (Motor City Blue) fresh after three decades and 20 novels, and any fan of the genre who has yet to encounter the ex-cop turned PI will get a great introduction through this collection. What's most impressive is Estleman's ability to blend sharp-edged language, cynical characters, betrayals, twists, and a memorable narrative voice within the short story format. He also manages to inject dark humor into his work that keeps the violence, corruption, and double-crosses from becoming too grim ("I don't have so many friends I can afford to drop one just because he tried to kill me"). Longtime fans will welcome the author's informative introduction. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 10/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Loosely modeled on Sense and Sensibility, Kiely's pleasing second cozy to feature Jane Austen fan Elizabeth Parker (after 2009's Murder at Longbourn) may be short on plot, but is well populated with lively characters, in particular genteel Southerners. The morning after Elizabeth's best friend's wedding in Richmond, Va., the bride's aunt turns up with a knife in her ribs. Many members of the wedding party are suspect, but when a diamond necklace is found in Elizabeth's room, the police focus their investigation on her. For reassurance, Elizabeth looks to "Elinor Dashwood's almost transcendental calm in the face of chaos." Armchair sleuths will enjoy following the clues up to the surprising dénouement. The most shocking thing in this fun, featherlight read is that these Southerners persist in calling the bride's grandmother by her first name without the courtesy of a "Miss" in front of it. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Canadian author Spano takes a light approach to political murder in her awkward debut. When Toronto mayor Hayden Pritchard dies of poisoning at a benefit for working children, the previously obscure Society for Political Utopia claims responsibility and announces in an e-mail that the assassination is just the start of their campaign "to create a political utopia for the real world." In response, the police assign Clare Vengel, an officer with just three months on the job, to pose as a political science student at the local university and attend a class called, perhaps not coincidentally, "Political Utopia for the Real World," to get a lead on the mayor's killer. Vengel finds herself attracted to the instructor, Dr. Matthew Easton, despite signs implicating him in Pritchard's death. The fast ratcheting up of the body count doesn't compensate for Vengel, who's a particularly vapid lead. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: | Details & Permalink

In Bruen's atmospheric, metaphysically tinged eighth Jack Taylor novel, the Galway PI clashes with Satan himself—or so all the clues scream. Denied passage to America at the airport in Ireland, Jack decides Xanax isn't enough and hits the bar for a Jameson, where he meets the mysterious Kurt, who tells him that "evil hones in on those closest to redemption." Soon murder and suicide point to the involvement of a "Mr. K" and force Jack to revisit previous cases, including a session with a tinker fortune teller. Bruen's usual tour of Galway shows Jack finding comfort in "that vanished Ireland where people stopped in the streets, blessing themselves and said the prayer." In addition to drugs and booze, Jack starts smoking again and reflects, "The Sig was to hand. I was ready and be-jaysus, I was willing." Lots of such delicious moments for the legion of fans dot this outing for the beleaguered detective—one character even suggests Jack read Sanctuary (2009), the previous novel in the series. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

As a member of a guerrilla movement that opposed Argentina's dictatorship, Mallo brings authenticity to his gripping debut, set in 1979 during military rule of that country. Early one morning, Superintendent Lascano of the Buenos Aires police looks into a report that two bodies have been dumped on a river bank. Instead, he finds three corpses—a young man and young woman, whose obliterated features are consistent with an army hit, and a man around 60, his face intact. The older victim turns out to be Holocaust survivor and money lender Elías Biterman, whose profession and faith provide no shortage of enemies. While Mallo reveals the killer's identity well before the end, the book's power derives from his depiction of an honest cop trying to do his job when even a judge observes, "With so many corpses everywhere, why worry about one more?" Martin Cruz Smith and Philip Kerr fans will be rewarded. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

When Peanut, the elephant star of the Drummond Family Traveling Circus, goes missing, along with elephant tamer Uri DeLeath, Uri's tearful clown partner, Popo, seeks the help of canine detective Chet the Jet and Chet's human partner in cracking crimes, Bernie Little of the Little Detective Agency, in Quinn's terrific third Chet and Bernie mystery set in "the Valley" of an unnamed Western state (after January 2010's Thereby Hangs a Tail). Sgt. Rick Torres of Missing Persons adds his considerable expertise, but it's Chet's fearless nose for clues that leads them on a strange odyssey that becomes downright hairy after Uri's found dead in the desert from the bite of an illegal African puff adder. Quinn, the pseudonym of suspense author Peter Abrahams (End of Story), radiates pure comedic genius via Chet's doggy bright narrative. You don't have to be a dog lover to enjoy this deliciously addictive series. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In Shamus-winner Coleman's darkly impressive sixth Moe Prager mystery (after 2008's Empty Ever After), the retired Brooklyn PI takes on a baffling missing person case only because his estranged daughter, Sarah, begs him to help. In the three weeks since art prodigy Sashi Bluntstone, the 11-year-old daughter of Sarah's childhood friend Candy Castleman, disappeared from a walk on the beach near her Long Island home, the police have found no trace of the girl, who "skyrocketed to prominence at age four when her Abstract Expressionist paintings... began selling for tens of thousands of dollars." Prager, who encounters a host of ugly characters, including parents Max and Candy, who aren't telling all they know, and resentful painter Nathan Martyr, becomes increasingly sure that Sashi is dead, but keeps slogging along. His past as a cop, his guilt over his wife's murder, and his current career as a wine merchant make Prager a complex character well suited to handle a complex mystery. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 11/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Monson has become increasingly well-known for his unusual books of prose (most recently, Vanishing Point), which toy with and subvert traditional notions of narrative and memoir, but he is, at heart, a poet, as this second collection attests. Hyperactive, and as much a product of the Internet age as they are about its phenomena—addiction to buying stuff, obsession with minor celebrities, general information overload—these poems tour a consciousness that can't quite figure out where it begins and ends. Accounts of Web browsing come off like lovely pastorals ("Online: sprinkling clicks among the pixels"), and vicarious living brings a surprising freshness to the everyday, "as if I've never seen/ the world in which I live before." A series of poems called "Availability" ravel together Star Trek actor–cum–Twitter celeb Wil Wheaton, wine scholarship and "Blackberries rustling in silent in pockets" in an attempt at intimacy with a beloved. There's a series of sermons, an "Elegy for Beotch" and disoriented recollections of bygone technology: "Last year's winter storm warnings/ replaying on a VCR.// What's a VCR?" The occasional prosiness of these poems is countered by the surprising music they bring to so many unpoetic things. The best will inspire readers to follow Monson's order to "Keep it all on your memory disks." (July)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Twichell's first retrospective collection gathers poems from six previous books and adds nearly a book's worth of new poems, all in an accessible, plainspoken style of mostly free verse that renders poems as crystal clear as they are deep. Again and again, Twichell confronts the fact of loss and the transitory nature of life with acceptance and a melancholy hope spurred by close attention paid to the natural world: "Creatures are born from atoms, from air,/ parentless, and drift like satellites/ out of a snowy tree," reads one early poem. One of Twichell's greatest skills is to depict nature as transcendent without making it seem anything but plainly natural, if mysterious: "Gravity draws down to me a halo/ whipped up of holy dust// or dust from outer space." Many poems also reflect Buddhist attitudes, reasons, perhaps, for their deep calm and acceptance. "Now when I can't sleep/ I say as a prayer/ the names of all the little brooks," she says. The new poems confront mortality with the same willingness: "A door blew open, and a black river/ flowed into my house." Many readers will find a companion in this book. (July)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: | Details & Permalink