Veteran NYPD detectives Joe Gregory and Anthony Ryan make their fourth appearance in Edward Dee’s Nightbird. The longtime partners know the boroughs, the worlds, and underworlds of urban New York as intimately as the cop saloon they frequent. When Broadway actress Gillian Stone plunges many stories to her death, many assume suicide. This theory is bolstered when the detectives learn that her employer, producer Trey Winters, had requested that the young woman submit to a drug test. If she’d been using, her career would halt.

But word filters down that Gillian and Winters were lovers. And the case is complicated by the detectives’ discovery that Danny Eumont, Ryan’s nephew, had once been involved with the dead woman. What begins as a routine case becomes a complex and personal challenge to the partners.

Edward Dee, an ex-New York detective, paints backdrops with authenticity and cynicism. Gregory and Ryan, purposeful and sharp, take different approaches to crime solution, yet blend their insights to reach resolutions.

Tom Corcoran is the Florida-based author of The Mango Opera and the new Florida Keys mystery, Gumbo Limbo, both from St. Martin’s.

Shooting at Midnight by Greg Rucka begins not with the author’s compelling character Atticus Kodiak, but with the bodyguard’s sometime lover, Bridgett Logan. This New York cop’s daughter is a streetwise investigator and recovering addict with a sense of justice and a weakness for drugs. Bridgett is asked to honor a promise made years ago to Lisa Schoof, a fellow down-and-out teenager. But the pledge to help protect her from an abusive ex-lover gets twisted. Lisa wants to murder Vince Lark.

Within hours, Lark has been killed in a shooting gallery, Lisa refuses to speak in her own defense, and Bridgett realizes that her father’s service revolver is missing. Bridgett must risk her life to learn the circumstances of the murder. The investigation exacts horrendous sacrifice, and Atticus is delivered a mysterious summons. To tell more would ruin this gritty novel’s true-to-life suspense.

Tom Corcoran is the Florida-based author of The Mango Opera and the new Florida Keys mystery, Gumbo Limbo, both from St. Martin’s.

Stone Quarry by S. J. Rozan extends an award-winning series with plot and personal repercussions from last year’s A Bitter Feast. Bill Smith and Linda Chin are attempting to mend their relationship by keeping a therapeutic distance she in the City, Bill at his upstate New York escape cabin. Even with classical music in the air, the boonies are not peaceful. Smith and Chin’s resolutions of past situations have led to a grim expansion of problems. A body in the basement of Smith’s favorite hangout and a woman requesting his expertise in tracking stolen art without police involvement force Smith to break his own policy of not working while on vacation. Rozan’s seamless writing ranges from glorious to no-frills, the action is backwoods tough, and Stone Quarry is consistently believable.

Tom Corcoran is the Florida-based author of The Mango Opera and the new Florida Keys mystery, Gumbo Limbo, both from St. Martin’s.

Anyone who has followed the sleuthing of Kinsey Millhone won’t be surprised to hear that Sue Grafton, in this 15th installment of what many people call the Alphabet Murder series, has been successful again. What will surprise readers is the journey into Kinsey Millhone’s past, something that until now, Grafton has withheld (well, save for some tidbits here and there). In fact, O Is for Outlaw is solely about Kinsey’s past. And because it is, readers are treated to aspects of Kinsey’s personality that make the character more real, more fallible, infinitely more interesting. The book begins when a shifty character contacts Millhone claiming to have a box full of Millhone’s personal documents. This event pulls Kinsey into a web of intrigue that forces her to confront some very real demons, some her own making, some the making of others. Thus, Millhone reassesses choices she made regarding her ex-husband and their marriage and sets out to right wrongs before it’s too late. In sum: She’s on the case, tracking a 20-year-old murder, navigating the very tricky path of memory, while, at the same time, trying to come to grips with choices she made long ago. One of the reasons O Is for Outlaw is so intriguing has less to do with the actual mystery and everything to do with Kinsey Millhone’s moral dilemma and it’s a doozy of a dilemma. In the interim, readers are treated to Grafton’s expert storytelling abilities, coupled with her subtle sense of humor. Kinsey is still funny, quick-witted, and charmingly self-reflective. It’s Kinsey’s honesty that makes her so endearing.

This isn’t the normal whodunit. Rather, this book is about the wonderful details of Kinsey’s former life. Grafton has opened a new door, but what next? O Is for Outlaw makes you want more: more Kinsey, more information, more mysteries being solved by this tough cookie, who isn’t as tough as she thinks.

Good novels provide settings that are more than ancillary. Distinctive locales become added characters. In Blue Moon, John Leslie’s fourth Key West-based Gideon Lowry mystery, a bluesy, island mood pervades. Leslie creates ambiance that blends a wistful, laid-back existence with the hurry-up veneer of a tourist mecca. This transformation, from ocean breeze-swept outpost to a hustling, high- dollar, real estate boomtown, brings financial pressures and transient visitors, and the dangers borne by each. Leslie captures the camaraderie of longtime residents, and the challenges they face: the intoxication of attractive strangers, and new, sometimes illicit sources of income. Private investigator Gideon Lowry is a part-time piano lounge entertainer. He’s also a Conch, a Key West native who bemoans his lost days of youth, the funkiness of a carefree, tropical life. He also regrets losing the love of restaurant owner Gabriella Gaby Wade. So when Gaby asks that Gideon do a background check on her new fiancŽ, widower and newcomer Roy Emerson, Lowry approaches the task with mixed emotions. Gaby describes Emerson as a man who puts deals together. Lowry would love to find a flaw in his character.

Lowry has other problems and opinions. The elderly owners of the mom-and-pop Cuban grocery next to his Duval Street office and apartment are being pressured to sell out. Fred Pacey, a developer with a 20 year history of ignoring tradition in favor of homogenized facades, wants to construct a central shopping mall for tourists. Lowry, too, has received offers. Positioning himself as a stalwart holdout, Gideon advises his neighbors not to sell out and ruin their way of life. Secretly, he wonders if it isn’t time to take the money and abandon the downtown rat race. Lowry’s initial queries into Emerson’s lifestyle connect the man with developer Pacey. Then, late one night, arson destroys the grocery. Gideon feels guilt over his bad advice, and his suspicions regarding the tropical terrorism are founded upon no solid facts. Soon Lowry is breaking all the rules: working on his own nickel, and trying to solve two simultaneous cases that may not exist. He walks the tightrope between rescuing his ex-lover from a danger that only he perceives, and his nightmare, destroying the friendship for good.

Advice from a Jackson Hole, Wyoming investigator (where Emerson’s wife died in a climbing accident), and help from old acquaintances, Detectives Dave Robicheaux in Louisiana and Hoke Moseley in Miami, prompt Lowry to stage an ill-advised ploy to expose the past and rescue the future. Throughout Blue Moon, Lowry runs on knowledge and instinct, but his feel for the turf, the unique island nuances and politics, mold his judgment and actions. He gambles friendship, takes risks. John Leslie’s version of the false carefree life in the Keys grips the reader and deepens suspense. Gideon may be left standing alone, staring at the cold, blue moon, but readers will appreciate the depth of this fourth book in the Lowry series.

Tom Corcoran is a writer in Florida. His first novel, The Mango Opera, was released by St. Martin’s Press in June.

On a sultry Los Angeles summer night, cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington should have been having the time of his life. The boat was spirited, the ocean calm, the lights of Catalina twinkling in the distance. He had $25,000 in found money and a steamy redhead awaiting him back on shore. Perfect, but for the fact that he was bound hand and foot, his mouth duct-taped shut, and his allergies to L.

A. smog blocking most of his breathing through his nose. Sublime, but for two thugs named Vinnie and Manny, who are currently chaining him to an anchor and manhandling him to the stern. Compliments of Onofrio Ippolito, Manny says maliciously, planting his foot in the small of Stone’s back and kicking him overboard.

The balance of Swimming to Catalina is told in flashback: it seems that Stone’s one-time girlfriend, Arrington, has gotten married to screen idol Vance Calder. (If she had married Stone, she would have been Arrington Barrington, which is too painful to contemplate.) Now Arrington has gone missing, and Vance Calder summons Stone to help find her. Oh, and one more small detail: Arrington is pregnant, perhaps with Stone’s child. Reluctantly Stone leaves his digs in the Big Apple and catches the redeye to the Big Orange. Stone’s inquiries into Arrington’s disappearance do not go unnoticed by the criminal element of Los Angeles. It seems that wherever he goes a silver Lincoln Town Car follows. He changes hotels, changes cars, to no avail. The Town Car is registered to Onofrio Ippolito, a shady investment banker suspected to be linked to organized crime. The plot thickens . . . On the verge of a breakthrough, Stone receives a call from an excited Vance Calder: Arrington has returned, and Stone’s services will no longer be required. (If this sounds a bit fishy to you, imagine how it sounds to Stone.) Stone decides to stay in L.

A. a few more days, albeit incognito, to sniff around and see what he can turn up. Before he’s through a movie studio will be in turmoil, a criminal operation will be revealed, a mystery or two will be solved, and several people will wind up deceased.

In Swimming to Catalina, Stuart Woods has delivered another in a series of well-crafted, tightly plotted novels of suspense.

Bruce Tierney lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Something nasty in the woodshed Sometimes when I read mysteries by British women writers, which is as often as I can, a phrase from Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm comes to mind: the something nasty in the woodshed once seen by Aunt Ada Doom.

An odd connection to make, you may think, considering that Gibbons’s brilliant parody is not a mystery and that a woodshed is not a common element in mysteries. But for me the connection is real and, given the odd workings of my mind and the principle of six degrees of separation, easily made. Usually there is something indefinably nasty lurking in the background of such British mysteries, something shudderingly different from the garden-variety sex, violence, and betrayal of American crime novels. Just as we never quite learn what it was in the woodshed that frightened Aunt Ada Doom, so are we often uncertain of the source of the nastiness in the mysteries. Sometimes even after we’ve read the last page.

So it is in Frances Fyfield’s latest suspense novel, Blind Date. In it, the kernel of the mystery as well as the wellsprings of the nastiness might lie in the sentiment, How do you make people love you? Variations on the enigmatic phrase are planted throughout, either as a thought of one of the characters or as the unseen narrator’s comment.

Caroline Smythe thinks it early in the novel. Caroline is spending, as she has for years, a two-week holiday at the bed-and-breakfast of an old acquaintance, Diana Kennedy. To say that Diana’s family are old friends would be false, as Caroline bitterly knows; what Diana has offered over the years is merely a pretense of friendship, laced with insults and rejection. Caroline has more than a passing interest in love in at least one of its forms. She runs an introduction service, a dating agency. The phrase arises again, twice, when Patsy, one of a quartet of young women friends, signs up with her agency.

Another of the quartet is Elisabeth, Diana’s daughter and a former policewoman who is recovering from severe wounds inflicted by an attacker. The wounds pain her less than the memory of her sister, Emma, slain by an attacker. Even more painful is her belief that she had caught the attacker, but he was freed by a judge who ruled her pursuit entrapment. The man subsequently killed himself, leaving behind the horrifying suspicion that he was not the killer after all. How, Elisabeth wonders, had she made the suspect love her? Even young Matthew, Emma’s son being raised partly by Diana, is affected. Stubbornly independent, reclusive, and besotted with gems as his late jeweler grandfather was, Matthew thinks, You are only as good as the people who love you. . . . How do you make people love you? Perhaps there can be too much of love, if it’s of the wrong kind, such as the smothering love of Caroline for her mama’s-boy son, Michael. He is, to return to that word, a nasty piece of work, just like his mother. He emulated her gleeful messing up of other lives, but he took it to extremes. Patsy is injured by an attacker and yet another of the quartet, Angela, is murdered by one. Are all of the attacks and murders being committed by the same person? Other questions arise, as they often do in mysteries. Did Matthew witness the murder of his mother and the attack on his Aunt Elisabeth? Who is Joe Maxell, besides being an acquaintance of Michael’s, and why is he sharing Elisabeth’s flat in the tower of a London church, a place so eccentric it defied belief? Why do all of these people seem to know each other? If there is any noticeable weakness in the novel, it rises out of that last question. The stew of personalities and murky motivations can be frustrating to deal with. On the other hand, it could be said that muddle is not a flaw but a hallmark of the mystery novel, so many of which have trouble keeping up with the dead bodies and how and why they got that way.

Fyfield’s mystery finally answers most of the questions it raises. It doesn’t open wide the door to the identity of the killer, but we know who’s behind it, and we’ve been led to the doorstep fairly early. The central, repeated question, however, goes unanswered. As to that, Joe and Elisabeth could tell us, you don’t make it happen, it just does.

Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger_miller@bookpage.com

Kinky Friedman, author, raconteur, country music singer ( They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore ), and private eye is back for his 11th investigative outing in Blast from the Past. In flashback, Kinky explains the series of events that ushered in his gumshoe career, a quirky and convoluted tale involving the usual cast of characters/suspects, as well as fellow country contra Chinga Chavin and Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, one of the inventors of the sixties. Shortly after having been convicted of complicity in the bombing of a Chicago bank, Abbie Hoffman went underground, where he remained for many years a fugitive from justice, always looking over his shoulder. Some of this time was spent in Kinky Friedman’s apartment or so Kinky tells it. Abbie and Kinky bore more than a passing resemblance to one another, so when someone took a potshot at Kinky, the immediate assumption was that Abbie was the intended target. But, as we all know, in a mystery novel nothing is ever quite that simple (particularly in a Kinky Friedman novel).

There is, of course, a girl. To protect the innocent, Kinky chooses to call her Judy. Judy is the proverbial bird with the broken wing; Kinky harbors no illusions, however, Once the wing heals good and strong, they beat you to death with it. To complicate matters, she may be sleeping with Kinky’s best friend, and she’s convinced she has seen the ghost of her flyer husband, killed in a plane crash in Vietnam.

Perhaps the best part of any Kinky Friedman novel is the barrage of topical one-liners and observations on subjects as varied as love and politics, death and cats. On the hippies and Yippies, The way I saw it, they hadn’t been wildly successful. When you start a revolution and you wind up with Nixon, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. On a little girl he met outside a Jane Street bakery, She had a spectacularly beautiful American face upon the planes of which intelligence and innocence fought a pitched battle that looked like it might last a lifetime. On his work, I felt particularly Christ-like as I cruised down Christopher Street, my cowboy drag drawing more than the usual number of stares from patrons of a leather bar just across the way. Like Jesus, I was without a home, without a wife, without a job. Also like Jesus, I was a skinny Jew who traveled around the countryside irritating people. It was good work if you could get it. Kinky Friedman is in a class by himself, some might say a world by himself, but from his little green trailer in Texas come some of the weirdest, darkest, and funniest mysteries of the decade.

Bruce Tierney lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Michael Dibdin’s latest Aurelio Zen mystery, A Long Finish (the title refers to the lingering aftertaste of a fine wine), combines an education in wine making and truffle hunting with a witty, wacky, suspenseful plot, a satisfying set of gory murders, and a solution that keeps the reader guessing up to the last paragraph. For those who have not yet met Aurelio Zen, he is an arrogant, bumbling Italian police detective, who, despite his seeming incompetence, manages to solve mysteries that baffle lesser minds. His subordinates view him with awe. As the story opens, Aldo Vincenzo, one of the greatest vintners in Italy’s piedmont country, has been brutally killed. His son is being held for the murder. A wine connoisseur, collector, and world-famous film and opera director (and friend of police higher-ups), summons Zen. Now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! he says. I want Manlio Vincenzo [the son] released from prison in time to make the wine this year. He tells Zen, Unless we act now, the grapes will either be sold off to some competitor or crudely vinified into a parody of what a Vincenzo wine could and should be. Zen is given a choice. Either get Manlio released from prison, or plan on becoming part of an elite corps of police officers who are being sent to Sicily to wipe out the mob. This, Aurelio Zen does not want, and we are launched into an absorbing (and funny) tale. Dibdin brings the Italian piedmont setting to life: russet and golden foliage sprouting from ancient stumps ; vines heavy with fat blood-red grapes ; the vast, cold damp cellar, its vaulted roof encrusted with a white mesh of saltpetre. He also brings its characters to life, describing three aging partisans, as interchangeable as pieces on a board in their dark, durable patched clothes, each garment a manuscript in palimpsest of tales that would never be told. A Long Finish is Michael Dibdin’s 12th book, and after reading this skillful writer’s latest tale, you’re sure to want to read the entire series.

Cynthia Riggs is a freelance writer on Martha’s Vineyard where she runs a B&andB for poets and writers.

Who knows how it happens. One day you pick up the 13th book in a mystery series, and the magic just isn’t there any more. The characters don’t appear as fresh or as interesting as they once did, and the plot leaves you wishing you’d opted for a racy romance novel. It’s difficult writing mysteries in series. Characters are expected to evolve and meet unique challenges in each new book, but sooner or later, some appear only as mere shadows of themselves. There is, however, an exception. The characters that spring from the fertile mind of Elizabeth Peters have never grown stale. The Ape Who Guards the Balance is the latest in the series and the 10th installment in the unusual life of Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson. Together with her sexy, irascible husband, Radcliffe; handsome son, Ramses; his loyal friend David; and her lovely, trouble-seeking ward, Nefret, Amelia is once again up to her exquisite neck in crafty criminals and Egyptian tombs. The year is 1907, and as another archaeological season begins in Egypt even Professor Radcliffe Emerson’s brilliant reputation is of little use in securing a choice excavation site. His less than diplomatic nature has landed the family another boring concession digging in the Valley of the Kings. Just as Amelia decides that there’s nothing she can do but keep a stiff upper lip, Nefret, now a young heiress, purchases a mint-condition papyrus of the famed Book of the Dead. This ancient collection of magical spells and prayers designed to ward off the perils of the underworld soon proves to be the key to the mystery that plunges Amelia into renewed dangers with old enemies.

In addition to grave robbers and bold villains, this adventure also provides another encounter with Sethos, the elusive Master Criminal who made his first appearance in The Mummy Case. As expected, Sethos’s flagrant attempts to impress his beloved Amelia still outrage Radcliffe, but one begins, perhaps unwisely, to soften to his charm. In The Ape Who Guards the Balance, readers will see yet another facet of Sethos’s enigmatic and captivating personality.

Devotees who have followed Amelia Peabody since her first encounter with Radcliffe Emerson in Crocodile on the Sandbank should be prepared to see Ramses now grown to manhood and every bit as brilliant and appealing as his father. The Emerson’s ward, the beautiful Nefret, who Amelia rescued from an isolated and forgotten desert oasis in The Last Camel Died at Noon, has been transformed from a 13-year-old Priestess of Isis into a tantalizing young woman quite unaware of Ramses’s growing fascination with her. Unfortunately, some characters in any mystery series must, sooner or later, be phased out. One might remember, with sorrow, the passing of the cat Bastet. In this newest addition to the series, readers should be prepared one of the oldest and best loved characters meets a noble end.

In Elizabeth Peters’s delightful Amelia Peabody series, the magic is still there, and the characters and plots just keep getting better.

Robert B. Parker has been writing Spenser novels for a quarter century now, and, let’s face it, his wise-cracking, hard-hitting, classics-spouting hero is getting a little long in the tooth. It seems only natural that Parker would want to introduce a new hero to his readers, even as he continues Spenser’s adventures. That the hero is part of the Spenser milieu makes it easier to get to know him, and considering the character’s character, that’s probably a good thing.

Jesse Stone is a man with a past; he’s an ex-Los Angeles police officer, divorced, and an alcoholic in the making. For a young man, he’s carrying a lot of baggage when he becomes the police chief of the little town of Paradise, Massachusetts (which is where we met him in Night Passage, Parker’s first novel in this new series).

In Parker’s new novel, Trouble in Paradise, we pick up where we left off at the end of Night Passage. Jesse’s actress ex-wife is living in Boston now, working as a weather girl. Also in for a change of scenery is Jimmy Macklin, who’s just out of prison and looking for a big score; he thinks he’s found it in Paradise, specifically Stiles Island, a gated community for the very rich. Together with Faye, his girlfriend, and a hand-picked crew of criminals, he plans to cut Stiles Island off from Paradise, rob the entire island, then make his getaway by sea. What he doesn’t count on is Jesse Stone if Jesse can find the time to stop him. His plate is pretty full as it is, with a hate-crime to investigate, a wealthy family meddling in his investigation, and three (!) women after him. Thwarting a band of expert, bloodthirsty criminals might be the easiest thing he’ll do all day.

Trouble in Paradise is full of Robert B. Parker’s trademark snappy repartee, straight-arrow justice, and characters you care about. Jesse Stone is not as endearing a character as Spenser, but like Spenser, like reality, he shows a capacity for change. I’ve got a feeling he’ll grow on you.