November Publications

Three premier novels from Intrigue's new WorldKrime series promise noirish thrills. In The Viper's Kiss, by Paris Aristedes and translated by Rebecca Koutsoudis, middle-aged Greek PI Chrisostomos Zaras is hired by a whiskey smuggler to track down a thief and a missing fortune in the gangsters and cultural divisions of Cyprus. (Intrigue [www.intriguepress.com], $23.95 304p ISBN 1-890768-38-3)

Maria Antonia Oliver's Barcelona mystery Study in Lilac, translated by Kathleen McNerney, lands street-wise, do-gooding PI Lonia Guiu in a dangerous mess reaching from wealthy estates to unsavory wharves while she's trying to help a rape victim and a defrauded antiques dealer. ($23.95 256p ISBN -39-1) In The Last Draw, by Elisabet Peterzen, translated by Laura Desertrain, as husband and wife journalists Erik and Katrin Skafte hunt a serial killer in Stockholm, they find out more than the police, and maybe more than they, want to know. ($23.95 330p ISBN -40-5)

Women prevail in Barbara Reichmuth Geisler's first novel, Other Gods: The Averillan Chronicles, set in the aftermath of the Norman invasion of England in the mid-12th century. Dame Averilla struggles to protect her Benedictine abbey when an important book is stolen, another nun goes missing and an alleged witch suddenly returns. (Lost Coast [www.cypresshouse.com], $16.95 paper 304p ISBN 1-882897-64-1)

Before she tripped over the body of a former student in the public library, middle-aged high school English teacher Amelia Prentice's big annoyances concerned her students' grammar mistakes. But when she becomes a murder suspect, her smalltown Adirondack lifestyle is upended and she must clear her name in Ellen Edwards Kennedy's Irregardless of Murder: A Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery. (St. Kitts [www.stkittspress.com], $14 paper 288p ISBN 0-9661879-7-0)

In forensic psychologist Richard Helms's (Joker Poker) second Pat Gallegher mystery, Voodoo That You Do, our New Orleans jazz-musician hero witnesses a pal's murder and helps out a 10-year-old girl who's run away from her Vietnamese mob-leader stepfather. The head of the Italian Mafia forcefully recruits Gallegher to help find the killers, Haitian teenagers who may have been hired, it turns out, to spur a war between the Vietnamese and Sicilian syndicates—but can Gallegher, the only one privy to various inside information, head off a gangland war and simultaneously pursue his romantic interest? (Barbadoes Hall/Back Alley [www.hometown.aol.com/BarHallCom], $14.95 paper 336p ISBN 0-9710159-0-2)

Edgar finalist Margaret Moseley (Bonita Faye) presents Milicent LeSueur, whose title character is a psychotic bag lady beloved by many of her townsfolk. When our heroine witnesses the murder of a high school girl near one of Milicent's hangouts, she demonstrates better, albeit wackier, sleuthing skills than the police. (Three Forks [P.O. Box 823461, Dallas, Tex. 75382], $20 172p ISBN 1-893451-05-4)

In Medical School Is Murder, by Dirk Wyle (Biotechnology Is Murder), series hero Ben Candidi takes a two-year grant in Miami to run a deceased scientist's lab and to write the scientist's biography according to strict specifications in the will. While immersed in the life of this oddball crusader "for science and reason," Ben discovers some strange things about his predecessor's political activism, weathers a break-in at the lab and learns that the scientist may not have died of natural causes, after all. (Rainbow [P.O. Box 430 Highland City, Fla. 33846], $14.95 paper 288p ISBN 1-56825-084-3)

Angela Zeman's debut book, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl: A Mrs. Risk Mystery Novel, offers an engaging twist on the Watson and Holmes—style sleuthing duo: Mrs. Risk, who seemingly wields magic, and her young, recently widowed florist sidekick, Rachel, attend a down-and-out Borscht Belt comedienne's comeback party. When their hostess's sole valuable, a pearl necklace, goes missing, and soon thereafter her manager dies mysteriously, Rachel tries to help as the inscrutable Mrs. Risk attempts to clear Pearl's name. (Pendulum [www.pendulumpress.com], $16.95 paper 224p ISBN 0-9712538-1-1)