The world is about to be buried up to its neck in snow and ice. A perfect storm of gigantic proportions is descending on the Adirondacks, and in Through the Evil Days, it becomes yet another enemy to add to an already impressive list. This addictive new entry in Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Russ Van Alstyne/Clare Fergusson mystery series is a worthy successor to the previous books in the award-winning series that began in 2002.

Now married, Millers Kill Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson are expecting their first child—an unplanned life change that has sent Russ reeling. He feels they need time together to adjust to the upcoming event, so they’re off for a delayed honeymoon at a cabin on a remote Adirondack lake. When the snowstorm begins in earnest, they mistakenly think that being snowed in will leave them snug and warm, holed up with plenty of food for the duration. Wrong!

Back in Millers Kill, New York, police officers Kevin Flynn and Hadley Knox investigate a local house fire that claimed two adult victims and left missing an 8-year-old foster child with a life-threatening illness. As the detectives search for the youngster, the fire becomes a complicated case involving a meth operation in the Adirondack wilds and a host of suspects. The drug connection leads the detectives to an uneasy alliance with an odd husband-wife pair of federal agents—who may have another, more devious agenda.

Kevin and Hadley provide a commanding side story to that of the beleaguered honeymoon couple. Russ and Clare each bring a personal and professional crisis to the isolated cabin—stories they’ve yet to share with each other. These intriguing sidesteps make the book all but impossible to put down.

The chapters jockey back and forth between the Millers Kill cops, as they slip and slide through an increasingly dangerous investigation, and the disastrous and life-threatening scene facing Russ and Clare, stranded by the weather and threatened by the very criminals their compatriots seek. These complicated storylines come together seamlessly, providing readers with an evening or two of nail-biting tension as the crippling snow and ice bring law enforcement and criminals alike to their knees. Hate to offer up that old chestnut, but this is a book not to be missed.

The Case of the Love Commandos is the fourth novel by Tarquin Hall to feature Vish Puri, head of India’s Most Private Investigators, Ltd., and readers can prepare for a wild trip through an assortment of crisscrossing and intersecting stories.

Take a missing student named Ram from India’s untouchable Dalit caste, link him with Thuri, the daughter of a landowner from the higher Thakur caste, and you get a couple of star-crossed lovers. Add one stolen wallet, a murder and attempted framing, and a pilgrimage to the mountain shrine of a popular deity that ends in a giant heist. Then mix these with an eerie genetic research facility called ICMB, whose influence—and funds—appear to reach the seats of local government and beyond, and you have the beginnings of a twisty, colorful tale that will whisk you through the countryside and city vistas of northern India and the streets of Delhi.

Puri, whose unfashionable sartorial style favors safari suits of different hues, often seems to be a step behind his main rival, the spiffily dressed Hari Kumar of Spycatcher Investigative Services. But watch closely and you’ll find that Puri’s scattered activities conceal a clever mind (working best on a full stomach) and the patience to conduct a clue-by-clue investigation of even the smallest bits of information. He uses a crew of operatives with wonderful names such as Facecream, Handbrake, Flush, Tubelight and Door Stop, whose crazy monikers belie their many capabilities of disguise and wile. A new, youthful addition to the agency, a boy named Deep, gives added dimension to the story and proves indispensable as Puri wraps up the case and one-ups his rival.

Hall’s colorful and direct writing is full of understated humor and gentle satire, and it provides a multifaceted look at India’s ongoing social issues of caste and hierarchy, family, love and marriage. The best thing about Love Commandos, however, is not its story, though it’s a fine and twisty tale. And it’s not the character of Puri, though the devious, clever, rather pompous, food-loving detective gets our attention and affection. What takes first place in this book is India itself. Hall offers us an up-close and personal view of present-day India, a vibrant, helter-skelter dance of color and hubbub in a pungent, savory atmosphere full of noise, confusion and corruption, bursting with change.

The Romantic poets provide a rich source of material for Lynn Shepherd’s latest historical mystery, A Fatal Likeness. This is the second outing for Charles Maddox, the discerning detective first introduced as the likely heir to his uncle’s legendary “thief-taking” legacy in Shepherd’s Dickensian mystery The Solitary House. Steeped in well-researched literary lore, A Fatal Likeness proposes an alternative history for Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, her volatile husband and renowned poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their cohorts. Her multilayered story examines dark turns of mind and mysterious deaths that may be explained by the missing papers Maddox is charged with finding.

Although Maddox tackles the case in 1850, much of A Fatal Likeness takes us back in time to 1816, to the tumultuous summer that brought the Shelleys and Lord Byron together in a writers’ retreat filled with intrigue, infidelities and the ghost stories that gave life to Frankenstein. Shepherd also expands upon the untold story of Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, going back and forth between the naïve girl entranced by a world of poetry and the practical, self-protective woman Claire has become.

The third-person omniscient narration is at turns engaging and confounding as the past blends with the present. It’s an appropriate confusion, as much of Shepherd’s story hinges on the parallels between then and now. Many characters are mirror images of each other, and their entanglements feed the intrigue, although some complicated relationships will make more sense to Shelley scholars than the average reader.

Shepherd provides an intricate family tree and thorough explanatory notes to help readers discern which parts of the Shelley story are fact and which are fiction. Obviously knowledgeable about the history, Shepherd uses gaps in the record as a jumping-off point for her fiction, while still respecting the writers’ real-life stories. Lovers of literary mysteries and historical fiction will appreciate the balanced approach Shepherd takes in A Fatal Likeness.

“I have drunk, and seen the spider.” This extraordinary quote from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale has seldom been better employed than in Barbara Cleverly’s new Scotland Yard mystery, aptly titled A Spider in the Cup. It chillingly refers to one character’s realization that the gruesome murder of an innocent person was committed solely to frighten him and weaken his already “wounded, fearful mind.”

This new release in the author’s Joe Sandilands series is set in 1933 between the two World Wars. Assistant Commissioner Sandilands is on assignment protecting American Senator Cornelius Kingstone, who—with his bodyguard, Bill Armitage—is attending a crucial international economic summit in London. Kingstone, a close advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, is a major player at the conference, and Armitage is a newly minted American citizen who’s well known to Sandilands from their shared military service as Britishers in the Great War. The three form a triad around which the rest of the story revolves, and they become part of a high-stakes political game where the fates of nations hang in the balance and no one can be trusted.

Earlier in the day of the summit meeting, members of the Bloomsbury Society of Dowsers search for concealed metals that may be buried at the tideline of the steamy, polluted Thames River. Instead of treasure, however, they unearth the body of a woman, whose mouth contains an ancient-looking coin.

Impossible as it seems, a thread of connection links Senator Kingstone to the early morning discovery, and Sandilands must do some excavating of his own to unearth a bizarre plot that takes him from a shooting party at a country estate to a private health clinic for women set on a back street of London. The detective finds himself subjected to a crash course in survival in this world of international intrigue, as seen through the prism of clever lawyers, economists, industrialists and other prima donnas (even including some of the Russian ballet variety).

There are a number of asides in the narrative, including a fascinating look at the ancient game of Nine Men’s Morris, which dates back to the Roman Empire and adds a nice puzzle to the plot. The measured pace of the writing does not lend itself to page-turning suspense, but it highlights the historical backdrop as major world powers make fateful decisions and alliances in the prologue to World War II. In-depth descriptions of the main characters are matched by realistic dialogue, historical details and an atmospheric re-creation of those turbulent times.