Sam Keller, a corporate auditor for pharmaceutical giant Pfluger Klaxon, is used to business travel, but his next trip will be far from routine. In Dan Fesperman’s new thriller, Layover in Dubai, Sam’s trip turns nightmarish when Nanette Weaver, vice president of corporate security and investigations, enlists him to rein in colleague Charlie Hatcher while between flights in Dubai. Charlie’s overindulgences in booze and women have embarrassed the company and placed newly acquired assets in Dubai at risk.

When Sam and Charlie arrive in Dubai, Sam acts as chaperone during a night out, only to discover Charlie’s adventures seem less seedy than Weaver had conveyed . . . until their last night in town, that is, when Charlie drags Sam to the York Club, a bar and brothel. At the club, Charlie disappears with a prostitute into the building’s bowels, only to turn up murdered in one of the club’s offices within the hour.

When Sam falls under suspicion, detective Anwar Sharaf comes to his aid. Sharaf is assigned to investigate fellow officers purported to be working with Russian mobsters, including the one investigating Charlie’s murder, Lt. Hamad Assad. When Sharaf sees Sam is innocent and suspects Assad is connected to the crime, he follows Sam into a rabbit hole of murder, mobsters and madams of ill repute.

After the first body drops, Fesperman delivers standard thriller fare: crooked cops, double-crosses, chases, evasions and narrow escapes. However, he enhances and elevates the story with his exotic setting; clearly Fesperman’s travels in the Persian Gulf—he was a reporter during the first Gulf War—have played a huge role in shaping this novel. Dubai, seen through Sam’s eyes, is as alien as a sci-fi spaceport: a city set in an exotic desert landscape, where tourists visit its bustling malls and bundle up to ski on artificial snow. Layover in Dubai primarily succeeds because of its setting, an alien culture expertly presented; but Sam, an average Joe rather than spy or detective, whose only resources are his wits and Sharaf’s considerable help, also adds to its charm. This is a fast-paced thriller that’s perfect for adrenaline junkies looking for a satisfying read to keep them on their toes.

Much to the delight of his fans, the brilliant, fabulously wealthy, king of cool FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast is back in action and out for revenge. Pendergast, the brainchild of best-selling coauthors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, has been the driving force behind 13 previous novels, including Relic, Dance of Death and The Book of the Dead (the only books in the series that the authors recommend reading in sequence).

Their latest book, Fever Dream, is a stand-alone read that exemplifies the authors’ mastery of the suspense genre. The story unfolds as Pendergast and Helen—his much-beloved wife of two years—are relaxing at the end of an African safari. Their peaceful moment is interrupted when Pendergast is summoned to kill a rogue, man-eating lion and Helen—who is a crack shot—goes with him. She is killed during a vicious attack, but an emotionally scarred Pendergast survives the tragedy. Some 12 years later, he discovers that her weapon had deliberately been loaded with blanks. Obviously, his wife had been murdered.

He sets out to find her killer and commandeers his closest ally, NYPD Lt. Vincent D’Agosta, in a search that takes them from Africa to the swamps of Louisiana. Meanwhile Vincent’s love, NYPD Homicide Captain Laura Hayward, is not happy. This isn’t the first time that Pendergast has taken her Vinnie along on a chillingly dangerous ride.

Clues drop and bullets fly as they get ever closer to the elusive truth when Pendergast uncovers Helen’s obsession with artist John James Audubon—and a quest for a missing Audubon painting that proves to be the motive for her death. He can’t help but wonder if he ever really knew his wife.

When deeper, darker secrets are revealed, a disgruntled Captain Hayward is forced into the fray as the killers close in and the action heats up even more as the tale races to its violent conclusion. At the end, though, some questions remain unanswered. Sequel, anyone?

Although the authors live 500 miles apart, their writing is seamless and totally absorbing, the byproduct of a friendship that began around 1985 when the two first met. At the time, Preston worked for the American Museum of Natural History, and Child was an editor, a rising young star in the book-publishing world. They soon became close friends and the rest is history—mixed with heady doses of science and mayhem. Preston & Child fans won’t want to miss Fever Dream.

In Erin Hart’s much-welcome third mystery, False Mermaid, pathologist Nora Gavin feels compelled to return to the States to investigate the five-year-old murder of her younger sister, Triona. It was Nora’s despair over that death, and her inability to pin it on Triona’s husband, Peter Hallett, that drove Nora to return to Ireland, her childhood home. Now Peter is remarrying, and Nora is determined—driven—to prove his guilt, even though it means temporarily leaving Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and their deepening relationship.

In Minnesota, Nora reconnects with Detective Frank Cordova, the original investigator still plagued by both the cold case and his interest—unrequited—in Nora. Cordova is as willing as she to focus on Peter, and as frustrated by their failure to link him to the murder. Wanting to prove her theory, and protect her niece Elizabeth, now 11, Nora pleads with Peter’s new wife to see what she is getting into. She is met with icy refusal and the same accusations Peter levels: that crazy Nora is still after him. Worse, the pair insist that Nora did not really know her younger sister, and that Triona’s own risky behavior led to her death.

But when another woman’s body is found, in the riverside park where Triona often ran and where evidence suggests she was killed, Nora believes Peter has struck again. Through her expertise in bog bodies—the remains are preserved in Ireland’s ancient bogs—and her contacts in the forensic community, Nora discovers the reverse: whoever the killer was, Triona was not the first victim. Working with Frank to review evidence old and new, Nora gets closer than ever to the proof she craves—and is led back to Ireland, where the old legend of the selkie might cast light on her sister’s death.

Erin Hart’s Haunted Ground (2003) was nominated for an Agatha and an Anthony for Best First Novel. Once again, Irish music, myth and history are integral to setting, character and even plot. The reader will find herself almost believing, along with Elizabeth and Triona, in the ancient stories of the selkies, humans on land and seals in the sea.

Leslie Budewitz sometimes sings Irish folk songs in her car while driving around western Montana.