It’s impossible! The body of a young woman, dead only a few hours, is discovered in a pose that suggests she was trying to claw her way out of her own grave. To add an even more macabre touch, the gravesite is that of a woman who has been dead for two years.

Magic and murder make a spectacular entrance in Angel Killer, an intricate thriller with techno overtones written by illusionist Andrew Mayne. Originally self-published as a best-selling eBook, the novel now appears in a newly revised version from Bourbon Street Books. This is good news for jaded mystery fans who believe every possible character type has been imagined and brought to life. Nope! Jessica Blackwood grew up in a family of magic purveyors; her father, grandfather and great-grandfather formed a dynasty of famous illusionists, and Jessica joined the family business, making a name for herself as a clever young female magician.

For Jessica, however, there was one trick too many, and fallout from a fateful experience led her to abandon magic and her famous family for a career in law enforcement. Now an FBI agent, she puts her former skills to use when she becomes an advisor to a team studying the graveside crime, which appears to be a feat of incredible, gruesome magic. She’s called upon to think outside the box—or grave, as it were—and discover how the horrendous illusion was perpetrated. The “trick” horrifies but becomes a public sensation and a perfect prelude to more spectacular and deadly events.

The trick for Jessica and the FBI team is to ensure that the public recognizes that there is an evil, and very mortal, killer behind the “magical” and deadly crimes. Jessica’s elusive and mysterious former lover, Damian, watches her from the shadows, adding a frisson of further excitement to the scene.

Angel Killer is both addictive and at times ludicrous, as when the FBI misses clues simple enough for a child in grade school. But the whole book is one big glittery magic trick, guaranteed to ensnare readers who love a great illusion, with a lot of authentic tricks of the magic trade thrown in. This story magnifies the creepy possibilities of social media and its own very great illusions. So, “Like” fans, beware! It’s all smoke and mirrors in the virtual world, sometimes with lethal consequences.

M.P. Cooley’s first novel Ice Shear is a solid, convincing mystery set in the snowy shadows of Hopewell Falls, New York. The story follows June Lyons, a former FBI agent who traded her big badge for the life of a small-town police officer to care for her sick husband, who has since passed. In an attempt to spend more time with her daughter and to fall in better with the police force, she volunteers for the graveyard shift. Her nights pass with no more excitement than driving drunks home and buying doughnuts for the morning shift.

The dear old town of Hopewell Falls is similar to Mayberry, until one night June finds a body of a celebrated congresswoman’s daughter impaled on icy shears that web the bottom of a frozen waterfall. The damage to the body indicates the girl died before the fall, but it’s only after another bloody body connected to the victim turns up that the case escalates into the murder mystery of the century and exposes the corrupt underbelly of a town laced with meth.

This pleasurable police procedural takes a while to pick up and does a fair job of telling Lyons’ side story as the main plotline progresses. Be patient, though—it’s worth the wait, as the story’s originality keeps readers engaged. When do you ever have a perilous biker gang showdown against a congresswoman who is in line for the vice presidency? Perhaps a trained mystery reader can see through the whodunit veil, but Cooley does an excellent job of taking readers through enough twists and turns that you’ll likely be guessing until the very end.

For crime aficionados, New York Times best-selling author Marcia Muller is always a welcome name, one to rely on when you want a sure thing—a book that captures the imagination and might even make you wish you’d cancelled your evening plans so you could just go on reading. Her latest, The Night Searchers—to be exact, number 31 in her San Francisco-based Sharon McCone series—promises to be that kind of book.

Muller is quick out of the gate with a catchy plot hook: A weird couple seeks help from PI McCone’s detective agency because the wife is “seeing things.” As husband Jay rolls his eyes and pats her shoulder, wife Camilla describes witnessing devil worshippers operating from the basement hole of a city excavation, possibly conducting a human sacrifice. The canny, pragmatic McCone intuits that something more than mental instability is at work here, and sure enough, the unlikely scenario soon begins to tie into an investigation underway by RI International, the firm run by McCone’s husband, Hy, a high-level hostage negotiator. McCone and Hy discover a non-Satanic connection between Camilla’s sighting and the titular Searchers, a shadowy bunch of treasure hunters prowling the ’Frisco streets, and with the kidnapping of the director of a political policy forum.

Hy and McCone dispatch researchers and operatives from their companies to connect the dots and discover what, besides treasure, the mysterious Searchers may be hunting, and how it may tie in with kidnappings and devilish conclaves. McCone becomes the suspect in a supposed murder attempt and hides out for a while in a safe house aptly called Cockroach Haven while directing the investigation. The story sports Muller’s usual mix of eccentric characters, not least the Searchers themselves, all with fake names containing the letter “Z.”

The McCone and RI agencies seem to have the power to do almost anything, from calling up the troops to calling off the troops, and the action never stalls. But this time around, Muller’s narrative has a choppy feel to it, jumping from one thing to another and occasionally losing its focus and our attention. The couple’s too-spiffy upscale lifestyle has also become a bit wearing, and readers will miss the old days when McCone operated out of the All Souls Legal Co-op and scavenged around for her daily bread. We are amply compensated, however, by the captivating tour of San Francisco sights and sounds that’s woven throughout the book.