Every professor learns the hard way that scholarship does not prepare the scholar for classroom teaching. David Nolta’s first novel hinges on an equally reliable proposition: scholarship, no matter how brilliant, does not make the scholar well-equipped for love or marriage. The murder of beautiful Virginia Vanderlyn, wife of one of Clare College’s most distinguished professors, is a brutal instance of the sorry state of affairs in the academy. Despite the high concentration of brain matter on one small campus, no one (or so it would seem) least of all Virginia’s archaeologist husband knows that she is dead and buried under the floorboards of the Vanderlyn mansion until 10 years after the deed is done. These various proofs of idiocy do not, however, add up to a typical satire on academic life. The subtitle of Grave Circle, “An Ivory Tower Mystery,” invites the reader to think of the book as a murder mystery; but at the same time “Ivory Tower” promises a comedy of manners, a promise fulfilled by the author’s affectionately tongue-in-cheek portrait of New England college life.

There is nothing satirical about the novel’s heroine, either, apart from her outlandish name. Nolta presents a vivid portrait of the inscrutable Antigone Musing, professor of chemistry, as she sits musing (no other word for it) on the arrival of her brother Hiawatha. Nolta almost immediately undercuts the pomposity of these names with the more manageable nicknames Hi and Tig. Such good-natured abbreviations fairly sum up the delightful psychology of the novel: everything falsely inflated gets the stuffing knocked out of it, including both the inevitable love story and the unexpected family romance that unfold. Making their amateur investigations of Virginia Vanderlyn’s murder, Hi and Tig form a fascinating, if ineffectual, duo of novice detectives. And as the mystery nears its suspenseful climax, Grave Circle summons the strange and satisfying feeling that something much more is afoot here than the “game.” To try to name that feeling would be academic. Michael Alec Rose is an associate professor at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music.

Since concluding his acclaimed Berlin Noir trilogy, author Philip Kerr has explored speculative fiction, mystery, science fiction and even the young adult genre. He returns to WWII-era Europe with Hilter’s Peace, an intense and masterfully duplicitous story that revolves around the Big Three Conference involving Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in Teheran in 1943. After losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the debacle at Stalingrad and being overwhelmed all along the eastern front, Hitler and his Nazi brain trust know that Germany cannot possibly win the war. Secret peace negotiations have begun, but as FDR says with understatement, It’s a delicate situation. Things become even more complicated when war atrocities committed by the Soviet Union come to light, specifically a mass grave containing the bodies of 4,000 Polish officers and a letter describing the nightmarish deaths of more than 50,000 German POWs. Two focal characters in the unfolding drama are Willard Mayer, a Harvard-educated philosopher with more than a few skeletons in his closet, and Walter Schellenberg, a general in Hitler’s SS serving as the head of Foreign Intelligence. Mayer, who is working for the Office of Strategic Services as a German intelligence analyst, is inexplicably called upon by FDR to accompany him to Teheran. But as the meeting draws nearer, so does the chance that his past political indiscretions will be uncovered. Schellenberg, meanwhile, has found out about the top-secret meeting and is planning to end the war once and for all.

Masterfully blending fiction and fact and replete with espionage, intrigue and clandestine military adventure Hitler’s Peace will not only appeal to WWII aficionados but also to fans of suspense novelists like Clancy, Ludlum and DeMille. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

eath by misadventure: that’s the coroner’s verdict in the death of Ann Butts, found dying in a London gutter on a rain-soaked night in the winter of 1978. Case closed. Or is it? “Mad Annie,” as she is known to her neighbors, is an unpopular, antisocial person, who drinks, mutters to herself and lives alone with a menagerie of stray cats. She is cruelly ridiculed by her neighbors for her strange behavior. She is also the only black person living in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Ranelagh, our narrator, finds Annie dying in front of her house and for a brief but powerful moment, they make eye contact. The problem is, no one but Mrs. Ranelagh believes that Annie was murdered, and she pays a heavy price for her conviction. At great personal cost, she makes it her mission and eventually her obsession to prove that Annie’s death was not accidental. She becomes depressed, agoraphobic and loses her job. While the Ranelagh family eventually leaves England, Mrs. Ranelagh does not leave her obsession behind.

The Shape of Snakes, a powerful tale of justice and redemption, is actually two stories: Annie’s and Mrs. Ranelagh’s. The author deftly explores not only what type of person would kill Annie, but what type of person would spend 20 years searching for justice. There are no superheroes or over-the-top villains in The Shape of Snakes, just a fascinating cast of deeply flawed, complicated and, at times, downright grim characters. They reveal their sordid lies and sad secrets through sizzling conversations that practically scorch the pages with their intensity.

Writing in the first person, Walters skillfully intersperses her story with personal letters, correspondence, documents, medical records and e-mail. It’s a smooth and ingenious way to introduce characters, unravel clues and span a 20-year time period. It’s also a bit like following a trail of tantalizing crumbs through the forest. Can Mrs. Ranelagh break through the wall of silence and complicity in her search for justice? With an endless list of suspects, The Shape of Snakes is an intriguing mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.

C. L. Ross, a life-long mystery lover, reads, writes and reviews in Pismo Beach, California.

Greg Rucka, author of the popular Atticus Kodiak mystery series as well as dozens of comic books and graphic novels, has released his first stand-alone novel, a suspense thriller entitled A Fistful of Rain that exposes the unsightly underbelly of the rock and roll industry. Miriam “Mim” Bracca is the lead guitarist for Tailhook, one of the hottest bands in the world. When they started their world tour almost a year earlier, the trio was just another rock band from Portland. Now Mim and her bandmates are media superstars. Their single is shooting up the charts like a bullet, and the band is on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Mim has it all fame, fortune and the adoration of millions of fans. But in a matter of hours, Mim’s world is turned upside down. She is kicked off the tour, and temporarily out of the band, for her excessive drinking. When she returns to her home in Portland, she is abducted at gunpoint and thrown into the back of a truck only to be returned an hour later untouched. When the police do nothing about the abduction, she calls her brother Mikel for support. He informs her that their abusive alcoholic father, who was imprisoned more than a decade ago for killing their mother, is out of prison and looking to reconcile. When nude photos of her surface on the Internet, she thinks things can’t possibly get any worse but they do.

Besides the compelling cast of deeply flawed characters and the masterfully constructed plot lines which kept me trying to figure out who was trying to blackmail Mim until the last few pages the melancholy, almost poetic narrative gives the story an extra level of illumination. The symbolism behind the phrase “a fistful of rain,” which comes from a Warren Zevon song of the same name, is used brilliantly throughout the novel as a metaphor for Mim’s life. And very much like a Zevon tune, Rucka’s novel is instantly addictive, hypnotically descriptive, witty, irreverent, disturbing and always entertaining. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer living in Syracuse, New York.