April Publications

A 15-year-old classic—and Edgar Award finalist—is happily back in print: The Spoiler: A Novel of Baseball and Murder by Domenic Stansberry (The Last Days of Il Duce), which follows down-at-the-heels, twice-divorced, baseball-crazy reporter Frank Lofton, who's drifted into a Massachusetts mill town to follow his obsession: the minor league Holyoke Redwings. When a player dies inexplicably and several cases of arson plague the town, Lofton becomes wrapped in a web of sordid smalltown corruption and political scandal. (Permanent, $22 paper 278p ISBN 1-57962-049-3)

The fact that he's been dead for over 150 years doesn't stop Angus MacNeil from trying to prevent the owners of a luxurious Hawaiian resort from building a golf course. But why would the ghost of a dour old Scottish immigrant meddle with the sunny Kohala Coast links? Lee Tyler (The Case of the Missing Links) adds a supernatural twist to the golf mystery in her latest offering, The Teed-Off Ghost, another showcase for the sharp-tongued banter and sleuthing skills off private investigators, golf specialists and lovebirds Harry "Win" Winslow and June Jacobs. (Fithian [P.O. Box 1525, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93102], $12.95 paper 208p ISBN 1-56474-389-6)

"I've been tripped up too often by numbskulls with no more going for them than a position of authority and dumb luck," sighs hapless Elias "Hack" Hackshaw, the wisecracking smalltown upstate New York newspaper editor with a complicated love life and an instinct for blundering into mayhem. Stephen F. Wilcox's The Jericho Flower: A Hackshaw Mystery, the fourth in the series, finds Hack a suspect in two crimes he didn't commit: the murder of a local con man and the kidnapping of gypsy princess Bimbo Wanka. Needless to say, things only get much hairier—and funnier—from there. (iUniverse/Mystery and Suspense Press, $18.95 paper 295p ISBN 0-595-21509-2)

Teenager Cory Williams is the only witness to the murder of wealthy libertine Jordan King—as if he didn't have enough trouble with his plummeting grades, angry parents, taunting schoolmates and his secret desire for other boys. The hero of Caro Soles's (The Abulon Dance) textured, psychologically astute debut mystery, The Tangled Boy, Williams begins receiving anonymous death threats and, even worse, threats to reveal his entanglements with Jordan King. (Baskerville, $14.95 paper 250p ISBN 0-9686776-5-7)

A domestic skirmish takes a sinister turn in No Love Lost, the sixth Phyllida Moon mystery from British veteran Eileen Dewhurst (Death of a Stranger). When the dysfunctional Jordans—Hugh and Sandra—suspect each other of cheating, actress and detective Phyllida Moon dons several disguises to keep tabs on the alleged philanderers at their business meetings and community choir rehearsals in the small English town of Seaminster. Brisk dialogue and the complications of Moon's many alter egos add flair to this old-fashioned whodunit. (Severn, $25.99 256p ISBN 0-7278-5816-5)

Like her debut genre-crossing thriller Damaged!, Bernadette Y. Connor's The Parcel Express Murders focuses on the tumultuous private and professional life of a female psychiatrist. Samoa Tate helps patients cope with old wounds as she struggles to come to terms with her own absentee father. When there's a string of sensational local murders and Tate begins a tentative affair with a police detective, she finds herself wrapped up in the criminal investigation in more ways than one. (Bee-Con Books [Ingram dist.], $22 238p ISBN 0-9715838-0-3; $13 paper -1-1)

Ambitious Hollywood ingenue Frannie Rosen lands a part in a horror movie directed by the celebrated (and reviled) Victor Madison, but gets more than she bargained for in the demonic possession department when a violent and slutty real-life doppelganger takes over her body. The over-the-top, irreverent serving of horror and Hollywood noir in Fifty Cents for Your Soul is something of a departure for Dietz (Footprints in the Butter, etc.), but who can resist a book that opens with "The woman who straddled Victor Madison had hiccups"? (Delphi [DelphiBks@aol.com], $22.95 288p ISBN 0-9663397-5-4)

Embattled executives, medical miracles and the Mafia loom large in Palmer Lake by Thomas C. McCollum III (Tainted Blood). Many in Palmer Lake, S.Dak., are stunned when local resident and world's richest entrepreneur Will Chase commits suicide, and a few—especially his wife—believe there was foul play. As the investigation of his death drags on and Chase's cryogenically frozen body becomes part of a battle between rival international research facilities, it looks like he may be the first human to be brought back to life to name his killer. (Shoji [Midpoint dist.], $25 348p ISBN 0-9713797-1-8)

Barry Friedman (Assignment: Bosnia), a retired orthopedic surgeon, brings his medical expertise to his third novel, The Shroud. When some perverse trickster steals the Shroud of Turin and returns it torn and blood-stained, Florentine Interpol detective Arturo Benavivo is soon criss-crossing Europe in an effort to crack the increasingly sanguinary case. (iUniverse/Authors Choice Press, $14.95 paper 227p ISBN 0-595-20637-9)