Anne Perry’s fine new book, Midnight at Marble Arch, features her well-known series duo Charlotte and Thomas Pitt in their familiar setting of Victorian England.

Readers of Perry’s engrossing novels know to expect the highest quality in both story and characterization, plus a continuation of the familiar and finely drawn characters from previous books in the series. But in this story, the unexpected and in-depth treatment of the subject of rape gives the book a timely, almost modern feel. The descriptions and language may be straight out of 1896, but the attitudes and arguments are still relevant today.

The dark debates in Anne Perry's newest Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery ring true even today.

Thomas Pitt, now head of Britain’s Special Branch, joins forces with Victor Narraway, his friend and the agency’s former head, to investigate several violent attacks on women. Narraway responds to the scene of a violent rape and the subsequent death of Catherine Quixwood, wife of a successful merchant banker. Likewise, Pitt and his wife are present at a society function when the daughter of the Portuguese ambassador apparently commits suicide, leaping through a window to her death. Charlotte, however, fears she was frightened into an accidental plunge after coming face-to-face with a young man who had previously raped her. Charlotte’s suspicions are strengthened after another woman privately names the same man as her rapist. The suspect is the scion of another prominent banking family of considerable means, to whom many are financially indebted. No one dares point a finger without an airtight case, and the frightened families aren’t talking.

Perry is adept at tempting us with the impossible—and perhaps inevitable—solution, as well as making us watch what we think are surefire clues go up in smoke. A discussion of attitudes toward the crime of rape is woven into the fabric of the plot, and we come to realize we’ve heard many of the same thoughts expressed in our own time. The author seamlessly connects the separate storylines and reveals multiple sides of various suspects, making us wary of convicting the most obvious.

Perry’s fans will also have the pleasure of witnessing a developing relationship between likeable series characters Narraway and Charlotte’s great-aunt Vespasia, as their growing bond, slight at first, becomes a crucial part of the story.

Although the author’s intricate prose gets a little repetitive and overwrought at times, we’re hooked on this provoking and tightly woven book to the very last page.

Erin Hart’s fourth novel in her acclaimed Nora Gavin series blends Irish legend and archaeology with present-day murder in a sad tale tinged with sweetness. In The Book of Killowen, American pathologist Nora and Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire are building a quiet life together in Ireland, healing Nora’s wounds and caring for Cormac’s elderly father, Joseph. Absent for much of his son’s childhood, Joseph is now suffering from a stroke, his ability to speak frustratingly garbled. When a bog body is found in Tipperary, near Killowen Bog, the trio and Joseph’s new caregiver move to Killowen Farm, a nearly idyllic retreat center and artist’s colony, to take over the excavation.

But the bog body has a modern companion—a murder victim. Detective Stella Cusack is eager to solve the crime, and the string of incidents that follow it, before losing the case to higher ups. Fortunately, her assistant has the experience with antiquities that she lacks. The murdered man’s identity is quickly discovered, and suspicions center on his estranged wife and her companion, frequent guests at Killowen Farm. But despite his brilliance, he had no shortage of faults—or enemies.

While Cusack untangles the secrets of the residents and neighbors, and their ties to the victim, Nora and Cormac study the treasures found with Bog Man for clues to his identity and his relationship to an ancient scriptorium once located nearby. Could he be the mysterious 9th-century philosopher and author of the controversial Book of Killowen? And where is the book? New secrets touch on the old, leading to blackmail and fiery danger.

The first book in the Nora Gavin series, Haunted Ground (2003), was nominated for Agatha and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel. In The Book of Killowen—Killowen means “Church of Owen”—Hart explores not only the mysteries of the Irish bogs, but also the ancient and modern mysteries of language and the power of secrets. Hart’s own language sings with sharp and powerful observations, of what she calls “characters in the great book of human events.” Pour yourself a Guinness, or brew a pot of tea, and dig in.

Leslie Budewitz’s debut mystery, Death al Dente, first in The Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, will be published by Berkley Prime Crime in August 2013. 

In A Cold and Lonely Place, the second novel of her new series, author Sara J. Henry returns with a plot that seems tailor-made for her character Troy Chance, a freelance writer who’s now working for a local newspaper in Lake Placid, New York. The first book in the series, Learning to Swim, won the author an Agatha Award and garnered bracing reviews from critics.

There is a mystery at the cold and lonely heart of this book, but first and foremost, it’s a poignant and haunting story about Troy’s search for the truth behind a young man’s life. Tobin Winslow, the person in question, has been discovered frozen beneath the ice of Lake Saranac, near the Winter Carnival’s ice palace. This tragic event throws the little community into disarray. An unfortunate news story by a rookie reporter somehow implicates Tobin’s girlfriend Jessamyn in the death and hits the Internet before it can be withdrawn.

Hoping to set the record straight, Troy accepts an assignment to write what she hopes will become Tobin’s real story. To Troy, Tobin seemed an attractive drifter who came from a moneyed past. He arrived in the Adirondacks and stuck around, taking up with Jessamyn but remaining elusive to those around him. Of Tobin, Jessamyn tells Troy, “He seemed like someone who could make anything happen, that anything was possible. That I could be anybody I wanted to be.”

Troy begins to write the story of a lifetime, about a young man with roots in a sad and unfulfilled childhood, underlined by a treacherous act against him that went so deep that he spent much of his life trying to separate himself from everything he once knew. When Tobin’s sister, Win, arrives in Lake Placid, she and Troy begin to put together the pieces of Tobin’s life by talking to those who knew him, from his nanny and teachers to old friends and acquaintances. They eventually unearth the facts behind the tragedy of his beloved older brother’s untimely death six years earlier, all leading up to Tobin’s arrival as a loner in this backwater town, where folks “don’t get involved with your life, except around the edges.”

This is a powerful, emotional journey for Troy, but ultimately a hopeful one, as she uncovers the stories behind one young man’s traumatic childhood, stories that will finally redeem him.

Cover of Snow calls to mind a wisp of remembered verse from an old Agatha Christie story, bland but somehow menacing: “Snow, snow, beautiful snow. You slip on a lump and over you go.” But Jenny Milchman’s debut mystery novel, which begins with a sudden death, is not bland. It is filled with the claustrophobic tension that only a good thriller can provide. The suspense locks you in on every page, and snow piles up everywhere: thick, white, all-encompassing and holding everything in its freezing grasp. You can try to run, but you’ll probably slip and fall in a drift.

There’s definitely something wrong with the police force in Wedeskyull, NY, a remote town in the Adirondacks. After Nora Hamilton’s husband dies (by his own hand, we’re told), the widow seems to be alone in wanting to find out what’s behind this terrible event, of which she had no inkling. Turns out she knows very little about her hubby and even less about his second “family,” the close-knit town police force. His buddy cops are everywhere, showing up with no warning by Nora’s car and near her home. They appear to be protective—but they are watching her, leaving Nora in a circle by herself.

The doors of the community figuratively close in Nora’s face whenever she seeks answers. Most disconcerting of all is her mother-in-law Eileen, whose basement holds clues that Nora needs in order to solve the mystery of her husband’s death. At first Nora’s only ally seems to be a car mechanic, a wonderful literary creation named Dugger who appears to suffer from a form of autism, and whose conversations, spoken in obtuse rhymes, have to be deciphered. Nora also gets to know Ned, a local reporter—a man of many faces and layers—and together they set out to uncover the truth behind the ominous events that are buried under the snow of many winters.

When promo materials say there are deadly secrets buried within Cover of Snow—believe me, they are correct.