Pilot Airie may be losing his mind. Twenty years ago, Pilot’s sister, Fiona, disappeared without a trace. Nothing has been the same since. The disappearance caused his family to unravel; his father left, his brother grew distant, and his mother now sees ghosts. Pilot has now taken it upon himself to pull it all together again, assuming that he doesn’t unravel first.

Raveling is a genuinely gripping and eloquent debut novel by Peter Moore Smith. This novel has the basic structure of a mystery an unsolved disappearance, puzzled and puzzling characters, suspicions on all sides but it is more a psychological exploration than a straight mystery. Smith doesn’t focus on the details of the disappearance. This is not a book with detailed passages on forensics or lab reports. His focus is on the characters and their interactions.

The story begins as Pilot returns home from California, where his brother found him living on a beach. Because his mother’s vision is failing, Pilot has agreed to live at home to help her. All is going well until he begins to hear voices: the electricity in light bulbs talks to him, the woods behind the house beckon to him.

Eventually Pilot is hospitalized. There, his counselor Katherine takes an interest in his case. As she probes deeper into his past, trying to find a trigger for his psychotic episode, she becomes fascinated with the stories of his lost sister. What could have caused her disappearance? Who could have taken her without leaving a single trace? As she digs deeper into Pilot’s memories, things really start to get interesting.

Raveling is an unusual mystery. It starts slowly, as if the reader has stepped into a story already in progress. But the deeper into the book readers get, the deeper the mystery becomes, and the greater the urge to read on. Unlike many mysteries, in which the unfolding of the story provides a greater understanding, Raveling offers little in the way of clues. This is primarily due to the fact that the protagonist, Pilot, may not be entirely sane.

Yet Pilot’s struggle with his sanity is one of the most intriguing and appealing aspects of the book. The entire story is told from his point of view, that of a medicated schizophrenic. If he himself cannot be certain of the facts, cannot be sure of his own perceptions, how can the reader? There are times when the reader must ponder the question, Is this a clue or a delusion? This uncertainty adds immensely to the pleasure of reading this book. Smith’s descriptions of Pilot’s deluded worldview are beautifully written and captivating, providing insight into his state of mind.

If you enjoy a literary mystery, or enjoy discovering a talented new writer, Raveling is the book for you.

Wes Breazeale is a writer in the Pacific Northwest.

Pilot Airie may be losing his mind. Twenty years ago, Pilot’s sister, Fiona, disappeared without a trace. Nothing has been the same since. The disappearance caused his family to unravel; his father left, his brother grew distant, and his mother now sees ghosts. Pilot has now taken it upon himself to pull it all together again, assuming that he doesn’t unravel first.

Raveling is a genuinely gripping and eloquent debut novel by Peter Moore Smith. This novel has the basic structure of a mystery an unsolved disappearance, puzzled and puzzling characters, suspicions on all sides but it is more a psychological exploration than a straight mystery. Smith doesn’t focus on the details of the disappearance. This is not a book with detailed passages on forensics or lab reports. His focus is on the characters and their interactions.

The story begins as Pilot returns home from California, where his brother found him living on a beach. Because his mother’s vision is failing, Pilot has agreed to live at home to help her. All is going well until he begins to hear voices: the electricity in light bulbs talks to him, the woods behind the house beckon to him.

Eventually Pilot is hospitalized. There, his counselor Katherine takes an interest in his case. As she probes deeper into his past, trying to find a trigger for his psychotic episode, she becomes fascinated with the stories of his lost sister. What could have caused her disappearance? Who could have taken her without leaving a single trace? As she digs deeper into Pilot’s memories, things really start to get interesting.

Raveling is an unusual mystery. It starts slowly, as if the reader has stepped into a story already in progress. But the deeper into the book readers get, the deeper the mystery becomes, and the greater the urge to read on. Unlike many mysteries, in which the unfolding of the story provides a greater understanding, Raveling offers little in the way of clues. This is primarily due to the fact that the protagonist, Pilot, may not be entirely sane.

Yet Pilot’s struggle with his sanity is one of the most intriguing and appealing aspects of the book. The entire story is told from his point of view, that of a medicated schizophrenic. If he himself cannot be certain of the facts, cannot be sure of his own perceptions, how can the reader? There are times when the reader must ponder the question, Is this a clue or a delusion? This uncertainty adds immensely to the pleasure of reading this book. Smith’s descriptions of Pilot’s deluded worldview are beautifully written and captivating, providing insight into his state of mind.

If you enjoy a literary mystery, or enjoy discovering a talented new writer, Raveling is the book for you.

Wes Breazeale is a writer in the Pacific Northwest.

In Don Winslow’s second mystery, California Fire and Life, police officer Jack Wade takes the stand to testify at the trial of a man accused of arson and murder. But dramatic surprise testimony by his nemesis a fellow cop reveals that Wade has perjured himself and in fact beat a confession out of the accused.

This gripping scene would play out at the climax of many a murder mystery, but instead serves as the backstory of Winslow’s novel with a twist. Wade, now an insurance investigator after being drummed out of the force for his perjury, is the hero of the book. He wrung the confession from the obviously guilty mob-connected arsonist to protect an eyewitness. Wade’s post-trial career as an insurance adjuster has him scratching the ashes of fires that consume property, memories, and sometimes lives. The remnants left by years of fires, coupled with the embers of his disgrace, have burned out most of Wade’s idealism, leaving smoldering disillusion quenched only by early-morning sessions with his vintage surfboard. One morning he finds himself at the charred ruins of a posh coastal mansion in which a beautiful woman lies dead. Wade believes from the start that the owner, wealthy Nicky Vale, set the fire that claimed the life of his estranged wife. However, Wade’s nemesis from his trial declares the fire accidental.

Wade’s instincts, and the encouragement of his boss (whose motto is " We don’t pay people to burn their homes down"), compel him to try to assemble evidence of Vale’s guilt, incidentally saving his company the hefty insurance claim. The path of Wade’s investigation takes him to a chief suspect who hides a tangle of deception even from those who believe they know his secrets. The reader soon learns whether Vale set the fire, but further surprises are yet in store. A veteran arson investigator himself, Winslow lets his 15 years of experience speak through Wade, from the detective’s joyful discovery of his vocation at fire school, to his years of bitterness as he inspects fires deliberately set. The insatiable hunger of fire as well as that of criminals, developers, insurance executives, lawyers, cops, old flames, and other vivid supporting characters is matched by the reader’s hunger to consume the story of California Fire and Life.

Gregory Harris is a writer and editor living in Indianapolis.

In the last novel written before his death, the preeminent chronicler of the mafia concludes his mob trilogy with the depiction of yet another memorable, aging chieftain. Don Raymonde Aprile, the Mafia leader in Omerta, is the latest in a long line of Mario Puzo’s characters who have tried to put centuries of vendetta behind them and become upright pillars of the American community. Unlike Vito Corleone, from Puzo’s The Godfather, or Domenico Clericuzio, from The Last Don, Don Raymonde meets with some success by keeping his three children away from the family business at the expense of his adopted nephew, Astorre Viola.

As he did in the two earlier novels, Puzo manages to imbue his less-than-savory characters with a sense of nobility by highlighting their redeeming qualities and downplaying their amorality. The crimes Viola commits during the course of the novel are portrayed as acts of justified vigilantism rather than misdeeds motivated by money. Although Puzo once again focuses on the complex relationship of loyalty and betrayal, the actual violence and bloodshed are more restrained in this novel, which was completed shortly before the author died in July, 1999.

Another new feature in Omerta is the character Kurt Cilke, an FBI agent who was responsible for bringing down many of the leaders of the Mafia in the years immediately prior to the novel’s action. The novel follows the quasi-legal dealings of Don Raymonde’s family and an attempt by a corrupt South American syndicate to take over the family banks for their own illicit purposes.

Puzo’s plot moves quickly as Cilke, Viola, and the syndicate work to gain the advantage on their opponents. Viola’s faction seems outnumbered, yet his sense of honor forbids him to break omerta, a code of conduct which forbids informing about crimes. The fact that Viola is willing and able to live by this ethical code, no matter how strange it might seem, is what distinguishes him from his antagonists.

By championing character whose ways of life are both traditional and reprehensible to modern civilization, Puzo forces the reader to consider the underpinnings of the larger society.

In Donor, the latest paperback from wizard plotter Charles Wilson, the author delivers another voyage inside the world of medicine that reads more like today’s headlines than fiction.

Wilson returns again to Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in this spine-tingling book. Donor is a mixture of thriller, action-adventure, and mystery, which is only one of the many reasons why Wilson’s readership is growing rapidly across genre lines.

Too many patients are dying inside the huge public hospital where the idealistic young doctor Michael Sims works as an emergency room doctor. When Sims watches a little girl’s life ebb away despite the best that modern medicine can deliver, he becomes depressed about his choice of careers.

Across town, a popular and prominent Congressman dies, his skull shattered, but police investigators determine the death to be a suicide. Despite what they say, the Congressman’s beautiful young daughter, Shannon Donnelly, stubbornly refuses to believe that her father took his own life.

With the stage set, Wilson skillfully plots to bring Donnelly and Dr. Sims together to uncover the truth about a medical experiment that utilizes nerve regeneration and organ transplants.

Along the way, Dr. Sims becomes the top contender for the dead Congressman’s seat, thanks to a computer billionaire who wants to organize a group of national politicians to back his dream of a nationwide chain of medical research centers. And Shannon Donnelly finds herself on a path not only to find her father’s killer but to save Dr. Sims as well. That path takes them into the deepest and darkest secrets of government and medicine where there are no volunteers, no donors, and where the pair discovers that death isn’t the worst thing they have to fear. Being chosen is.

Wilson’s next hardback book, Game Plan, will be released in January. ¦ Alice Jackson Baughn is a freelance writer in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

One hallmark of a good writer is the ability to follow a very successful first work with one that surpasses it. April Smith has done just that with her latest suspense thriller, Be The One. This new book reflects the same originality and thorough research as her North of Montana, which was widely praised by critics and readers. This time, Smith reveals her life-long fascination with baseball when she takes the reader behind the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers to meet the club’s fiercely competitive scouts, who are charged with finding and signing the league’s future all-stars.

Cassidy Sanderson is the daughter of legendary pitcher Smokey Sanderson and the only female scout in major league baseball. Like her male counterparts, Cassidy is a hard-living, hard-drinking, passionate follower of the game; her life revolves around the young men who struggle to make it to the minors in the hope of a shot at the big time. She is constantly on the lookout for that rarest of diamonds, The One, a player who will carry the day and lead his team to victory.

A well tended network of friends and coaches alerts Cassidy to promising prospects. Although nominally assigned an area in the United States, she is drawn to a call from Pedro Padrillo, her father’s teammate and a close family friend, who reports observing Alberto Cruz, a young player in the Dominican Republic. While in Santo Domingo observing Cruz’s play, Cassidy begins a torrid affair with Joe Galinis, a flamboyant Greek developer from Los Angeles, who owns one of the city’s plushest casinos.

Cassidy confirms Pedro’s instinct that Cruz has the talent to reach the majors and convinces her bosses to fly him to L.

A. for a closer look. Soon after he arrives at the Dodgers’s training camp, Alberto begins receiving blackmail letters, voodoo warnings, and a gruesome video all threatening to reveal the details of a fatal hit and run accident in Santo Domingo that might have involved him, Cassidy, and Joe Galinis. The blackmail threats evolve into violence when Cassidy advises Alberto not to pay; she is attacked in a nightclub parking lot and survives only because of the timely arrival of other customers.

Cassidy turns to Joe Galinis in an effort to sort out the pressures that seem to be crashing in on her usually hectic life pressures that jeopardize Alberto’s chances. The police suspect an underlying drug connection behind the violent intimidation.

Cassidy herself becomes a suspect and feels her declining influence with the club as she pushes to elevate Alberto in the upcoming player draft.

Only a true insider could include the details that flesh out Smith’s absorbing yarn as she brings all these strands to a stunning ending certain not only to make readers ask for more, but also help them appreciate the rocky climb from barrio sandlots to the majors.

John Messer is a writer in Michigan.