The Sound of Broken Glass, the 15th entry in Deborah Crombie’s popular series featuring Det. Inspector James and Det. Superintendent Kincaid, often flashes back to the seedy Crystal Palace neighborhood in southeast London. The area once boasted the famous Crystal Palace building, a huge glass exhibition hall reconstructed from its famous Hyde Park original in 1854, but then burned to the ground in a spectacular fire in 1936. The novel builds its core from the memories of those who once inhabited the neighborhood and had heard of the spectacular building, and the recurring theme of lives as fragile as glass weaves its way throughout Crombie’s new Gemma James/Duncan Kincaid mystery novel.

Broken Glass picks up the pieces of several interlocking stories from the past, all of which seem to have their genesis in the Crystal Palace neighborhood. Years earlier, Andy, a lonely but musically talented adolescent boy who’s often beset by older neighborhood bullies, befriends Nadine, a young widow. Tragedy and a mysterious betrayal appear to cause an end to the friendship, and Nadine disappears from the neighborhood.

In the present day, Andy, now beginning to make a name for himself as a rock guitarist, seems to be connected to the grisly death of a barrister. The victim confronted Andy during a performance just prior to the murder, which took place a bit later in a derelict hotel. When a second, similar murder of a barrister occurs, Scotland Yard takes up the trail in earnest.

Gemma and Duncan, now married, alternate childcare responsibilities, with Gemma currently at Scotland Yard while Duncan stays home on childcare leave. Gemma and her young assistant, Det. Sergeant Melody Talbot, seek to determine the tragic circumstances that bind Andy’s past and present in bonds that seem unbreakable. Duncan joins the sleuthing when he realizes that the young guitarist figured into a former case.

Those familiar with Crombie’s earlier novels will be pleased that this entry matches her previous books in suspense and writing prowess. Newcomers to the series will find a welcome backlog of previous James/Kincaid novels to whet their appetite after discovering this fine novel.

Set in the fictional South Berlin Teaching Hospital, Christoph Spielberg’s amusing crime series features the adventures of Dr. Felix Hoffman, a 40-something emergency room attending physician. Dr. H. remarks on everything with a jaded eye and a humorous air, and nothing is sacred. He skewers the medical profession; hospitals and their recent turn toward privatization; medical personnel and their motives; and healthcare’s draconian cost-cutting measures. Taking in the proceedings from his viewpoint is to catch everything just a little off-kilter, with a bit of a zany edge.

In The Russian Donation, the first of the series to be published in English, Hoffman gets into a muddle when an ER patient named Misha arrives via ambulance and promptly dies . . . or was he dead before he arrived? The situation mushrooms into a mystery when the official death certificate (signed by Hoffman) turns up a while later—filled out with a different cause of death. Then the patient’s medical file goes missing altogether. Dr. H. sets out to find who’s behind the mess and why, resulting in a smooth pairing of comedy and crime.

As seen through Hoffman’s sardonic and wary eyes, the privately administered South Berlin Hospital contains a rogue’s gallery of suspects, some downright Damon Runyon-esque (in a Germanic sort of way). There are odd goings-on in the blood bank, and the young resident who accompanied Misha’s stretcher into the ER is suddenly posted to America. The hospital’s COO, who’s been stonewalling Hoffman’s investigation, gets stonewalled himself. All of these dire and comic events get sorted out after Hoffman and his smart and sassy girlfriend hunker down with a stack of pilfered documents to figure out how everything connects.

Readers who like a good mystery sprinkled with wit and a touch of sarcasm will enjoy the thrusts and parries administered by author Christoph Spielberg, who studied medicine in the U.S. as a German exchange student before he published this series. The novel is ably translated by Gerald Chapple, who must have enjoyed a good chuckle or two as he worked.

Portland, Maine, 1893: Police deputy Archie Lean is called on to view a crime scene—a mutilated body found in an abandoned building, with strange occult symbols drawn near the corpse. This is especially curious because the very same man had been shot dead and publicly buried two weeks earlier. Perplexed, Lean calls on private detective Perceval Grey, an associate from a previous case. Grey, a half-Abenaki Indian, possesses a sardonic wit and loner mentality that keep him at a remove from many others in the community. However, it’s clear that the two quick-witted and persistent detectives, together for their second sleuthing adventure (after The Truth of All Things), have formed a bond.

After studying the body and odd inscriptions, Lean and Grey are off and running. Solving the crime will take all of Grey’s Sherlockian instincts and Lean’s common sense, plus a lot of footwork back and forth between Portland and Boston, where the famous Boston Athenaeum holds a vital clue they must decipher.

A Study in Revenge offers two adventures in one, as Grey has recently responded to a dying man’s request to locate his missing granddaughter. The detective also gets embroiled in the search for a stolen artifact belonging to the man’s family, a so-called “thunderstone,” supposedly an ancient relic of great power. At this point in author Kieran Shields’s tale, we’re fair detectives ourselves if we’ve figured out how all these puzzle pieces will fall into place as the story develops.

The plot is awash in mysterious circumstances and suggestions of the occult. Looming large is the shadowy Jotham Marsh, a Moriarty-like figure who commands a mystical society called The Order of the Silver Lance—he’ll surely materialize again in future books. The story contains enough underground tunnels, rooftop chases, risings from the dead, treasure searches and strange decipherings to keep everyone busy, but despite all the activity, the story tends to bog down when pages of historical detail (from ancient Viking lore to descriptions of the geography of Boston) are inserted in the midst of the text. Readers determined to remain alert, however, will be rewarded with a rich and multi-layered adventure told with skill and attention to detail.

Marcia Muller’s writing instructor told her she didn’t have the goods to become a successful author, but in the early 1970s Muller tried her hand at mystery novels. The result, in 1977, was her first best-selling Sharon McCone mystery, Edwin of the Iron Shoes. Over the next 30 years, the award-winning author has penned 25 additional novels featuring P.I. McCone, each one an intriguing addition to the series.

McCone has come a long way, baby, since her start as a staff investigator with All Souls Legal Cooperative; now she’s the head of a San Francisco investigative agency. In Looking for Yesterday, McCone meets with Caro Warrick, a woman who’s been acquitted of killing her best friend, but who wants an in-depth investigation into the murder to uncover the real killer—thus truly exonerating herself in the public eye. The case has barely gotten started, however, when Warrick is murdered on McCone’s very doorstep.

The P.I. and her staff must pick up the pieces where there’s little to go on besides newspaper accounts of the trial. McCone collects a string of unconnected facts, searching for anyone with ties to Warrick: a sheep-grazing hermit; an old lover or two; some illegal arms smugglers; a reporter for a radical right-wing paper who’d trashed the victim during her trial; a string of dysfunctional family members . . . not to mention a body stuffed in a drainage pipe. The action ratchets up a notch when McCone finds herself in danger, crouched alone in a sabotaged elevator and, later, caught in a savage, devastating fire. Why are the stakes so high?

The story is laced with the interactions between McCone and her well-traveled husband, a high-flying international investigator, as well as her family and network of friends. Their lives are just a little too polished and prosperous, perhaps . . . it seemed a bit more real in McCone’s earlier days, without all the private jets, upscale (and numerous) homes, nifty outfits and easy money. But there’s a considerable upside as well. It’s a joy to read prose that slides like water over smooth stones, with nary a misstep or misplaced comma. Looking For Yesterday is an appealing read from a true professional.