An Obvious Fact, the 12th novel in Craig Johnson’s popular Longmire series, tries to throw a wrench in the works by moving the titular hero out of his natural element. But Walt Longmire is an element in himself, perfectly capable of functioning in any place and under any circumstance with his usual gruff, hard-fisted dedication to righting wrongs wherever he finds them.

In this case, Walt leaves his usual stomping grounds of Absaroka County, Wyoming, to solve a hit-and-run at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. It isn’t long before an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the trail of a suspected gun-smuggling operation also ends up dead, increasing the scope of Walt’s investigation. Throw in a super-size military assault vehicle, rival motorcycle gangs and a plot to manufacture synthetic polymer weapons, and the stage is set for a thrilling climactic showdown in the shadow of the famous Devils Tower national monument.

That in itself would be enough to satisfy those looking for a fast-paced, action-packed read, but this is a Longmire novel, after all. As such, Johnson obligingly weaves in plenty of humorous banter, emotional bonding and deep characterization to bring his extended cast of Walt, Undersheriff Victoria Morettli and Henry Standing Bear to life. Henry, in fact, is a key focus of the book. At issue is his relationship to Lola, the real-life femme fatale and namesake for Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird, who is the possible mother of his son, the aforementioned hit-and-run victim.

An Obvious Fact is a welcome addition to the Longmire canon and one fans will anxiously wait to see adapted on the small screen. 

So Say the Fallen is Stuart Neville’s seventh crime novel, and the third in his fine Belfast series to feature DCI Serena Flanagan. It’s an enthralling modern-day police procedural that allows readers ample opportunity to appreciate the author’s skill at creating characters of depth and staying power.

Successful businessman Henry Garrick, severely injured in a car accident, has apparently committed suicide six months after the event. Called in on what looks like an open-and-shut case, Flanagan senses that something isn’t right about the scene, and she begins looking closely at the widow’s grief—as well as the behavior of the Garrick’s rector, frequently on the scene in the role of comforter to the bereaved.

Starting with the seemingly obvious death by overdose, the author switches his magnifying lens to each character, viewing them from a variety of angles. Small cracks in their facades begin to appear, eventually opening a chasm of suspicion that Flanagan diligently pursues. As a woman apparently locked in anguish, Roberta Garrick eventually reveals her many facets, possessing stealth and craftiness that becomes more frightening as the story progresses. The detective also shadows the rector, who comes close to confiding in her as he reveals a rabbity, furtive desperation that’s heightened as he confronts the loss of his own religious faith.

Flanagan receives no support from her superiors, who want her to sign off on the tragedy and call it a suicide. But her scrutiny pays off as she picks up on small, odd anomalies of behavior, refusing to abandon her own theory that wife and rector are far more than a picture of innocence. A moving and all-too-believable side story provides a look into Flanagan’s personal life as she finds herself estranged from her husband and kids, who want more family commitment from her just when she’s deeply ensnared in the case.

This novel stands apart from many of today’s thrillers in which scattershot dialogue often adds little more than surface thrills to play-by-play action and wannabe screenplay scenes. Neville reveals an outsize talent for offering real and disturbing insights into his characters and for allowing readers an all-too-rare opportunity to penetrate beyond the shell of a story. This is one of those books that you won’t want to put down until you’ve read it cover to cover.

Author Michael Robertson successfully capitalizes on our never-ending fascination with Sherlock Holmes in his new Baker Street Letters mystery series, now updated with a fifth entry, The Baker Street Jurors.

This satisfying, dryly humorous book follows in the footsteps of the others Robertson has penned in the series. He uses the clever trope of following the contemporary tenants at 221B Baker Street, brothers Reggie (barrister) and Nigel (solicitor), who’ve found that their offices continue to receive mail addressed to the building’s famous former tenant. It’s clear that scores of people believe that Holmes is no fantasy and, what’s more, that he lives on. The duo can’t help picking up on some of the mail and following through on requests for the great detective’s assistance.

The Baker Street Jurors involves a wayward summons for jury duty mistakenly addressed to one Sherlock Holmes, coupled with one of the same for Nigel, who ends up as an alternate juror at the murder trial of a famous British cricket player. The trial comes at the same time as the big championship game, frustrating most of the population of England, who want him acquitted and ready to compete.

It’s odd, though—the jurors themselves seem to be mysteriously falling by the wayside one by one, victims of various strange mishaps, leading to the suspicion that someone’s trying to pack the jury in a particular way.

This isn’t just another legal thriller. It’s so smoothly written it sneaks up on you, as testimony slowly builds the case for and against, without the need for other chapters that revisit the crime. Activities are conducted in a conversational tone, and the author has done a superb job of character build-up, including the presence of one odd alternate juror whose pipe-smoking habits and Holmesian methodology strike a curious chord with fellow jurors. There’s enough background to pique interest, not enough to bore.

Understated humor lifts this tale a cut above the ordinary. While Nigel is a central character, it’s Mr. Justice Allen, the trial judge, who steals the show. As jurors succumb one by one to odd accidents, he can be heard to issue the warning “Don’t run with scissors” and other droll admonishments, or to comment on the jury members’ bad note-taking habits such as making “sketches of male and female naughty bits.”

Readers who pick up this book will want to visit Robertson’s earlier books and learn more about this treat of a series.

Imagine the guilt and fear you would have to live with if, while you slept, your sibling were abducted from your shared bedroom. Protagonist Julia Gooden has lived with those feelings for 30 years. She was only 7 when her brother was kidnapped, and can’t remember anything from that night other than not locking the outside door because she didn’t want her brother to think she was a baby. The daughter of an alcoholic mother and a grifter father, she lost her only anchor with her brother’s snatching.

Now a crime beat reporter, Julia calls the investigating officer on the anniversary of her brother’s unsolved disappearance to see if anything has surfaced. He responds kindly, showing his concern for her mental health, but has no new leads. Obsessive and fearful, Julia is abnormally overprotective of her own children, ages 2 and 9, and her marriage is strained to its breaking point.

The horrific kidnapping of Julia’s 2-year-old reignites her feelings of helplessness. But this time, Julia doesn’t give up; as a journalist, she is in a position to investigate her son’s situation. Her emotions are running high as she tries to determine if the kidnapping of her child is related to her brother’s, or if it’s merely a random, unfair coincidence. While many facts makes a plausible case the kidnappings are connected, there is enough mystery and second-guessing in The Last Time She Saw Him to satisfy diehard suspense readers.

Journalist Jane Haseldine’s debut novel rings with authenticity as she, like Julia, is a former crime reporter. This is a harrowing read.

Lately it seems that each new crime debut must include some idiosyncrasy—the detective must have a quirk that sets him or her apart from the many crime solvers populating the suspense genre. They’re overeaters, opera lovers, poets, phobics, depressives or wise guys. Debut author David Swinson goes one step further, presenting his antihero, former cop and current part-time PI Frank Marr, as effectively part of the problem of drug-related crime he’s often out there solving.

In The Second Girl, Swinson makes sure we know only too clearly how Marr’s own drug addiction affects his day-to-day; how it can cloud the faculties and hold judgments hostage to the need for the next fix and a consistent resupply. Marr’s secret is a heavy one, though he stays away from crack and heroin, sticking to powder cocaine, pills and booze. But he’s constantly at risk of discovery by colleagues and friends. The only person who knows of his addiction is his former deputy chief, who forced the detective’s “early retirement” but left his record clean, due to both the fragility and success of the many cases Marr successfully resolved.

Marr has been on a days-long stakeout at the house of a D.C. drug gang. Only thing is, he’s hoping to score drugs for his own use on the sly. Instead, complications present as he searches the house and discovers a teenage girl, abducted and held captive. In the wake of the publicity Marr receives following her rescue, he gets tapped to help some former police colleagues search for another missing teen. He reluctantly agrees, walking an even more precarious line of possible discovery.

Readers learn in detail what it’s like to plan one’s whole life around scoring that next hit, maintaining a level of personal control and evading discovery. Just as lying and subterfuge are part of the world of crime Marr investigates, they are equally part of his own daily grind.

The crime story in The Second Girl is itself mildly interesting, and it’s clear that this detective doesn’t play by any rule book. He’s alternately clever, intuitive and violent in his pursuit of these street criminals. It’s Marr’s addiction and its effects on his life that take center stage here, and they’re given first-person immediacy in this fast-moving yet still introspective narrative. It’s often nerve-wracking, sometimes gruesome, but in the end carries a note of wearying sameness throughout.

Homicide detective Elouise “Lou” Norton is enjoying a lunch date at Johnny’s Pastrami with hunky Assistant DA Sam Seward when she gets a phone call. Her partner, Colin Taggert, calls her to a murder scene, where a body has been discovered lying in a wooded park outside of Los Angeles. The victim is a young teenage girl, which seems to fit with a recent pattern of crime in the LA area, except that the other girls in question are still missing and presumed kidnapped. This one is definitely dead.

The gruesome murder provides a fast-paced kickoff for Trail of Echoes, author Rachel Howzell Hall’s tense exploration of murder in a down-and-out LA neighborhood, and her third thriller after Land of Shadows and Skies of Ash. Hall pens an in-depth, believable portrait of the series’ black, female detective Norton, and it’s filled with realistic and whip-smart dialogue matched with tight, visceral descriptions of local scenes.

Norton and Taggert set off to inform the young victim’s mother of the tragedy, and the address turns out to be the same apartment building where Lou grew up. Like the homicide detective herself, the 13-year-old victim, Chanita, seemed to have been on a path that held the promise of escape from the gray, distressed area of housing projects where she lived. Norton finds the family apartment filled with Chanita’s expressive photographs, along with awards and citations honoring her young talent. This matches a framework common among the recent disappearances—they’re adolescents with talent and promise, all missing from the same LA neighborhood and school district, all close in age and race.

The detective and her team cast a wide net, uncovering several persons of interest: a neighborhood tough named Ontrel who claimed to be her protector; a Mexican dude named Raul Moriaga, who lives downstairs; her photography teacher and mentor, Payton Bishop; and even a selection of her mom’s old boyfriends. Important clues to identifying the murderer’s identity include the strange photograph of a flowering plant found in the victim’s bedroom and a series of creepy coded messages left anonymously for Detective Norton, including an odd statue or two posed on the hood of her car.

Full of toe-tapping, fidgety energy that’s tamped down and ready to brim over at any moment, Trail of Echoes offers an addictive read from a promising new author.

Crime, books and libraries make for a heady combination in Murder at the 42nd Street Library, the first in a new series by Con Lehane that mixes mystery with some of America’s most famous institutions of higher reading.

The librarian/sleuth of this tale is Ray Ambler, who curates the crime fiction collection at the lion-guarded flagship building of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan. In addition to its many literary allusions, the book is bursting with Big Apple sights, sounds and liveliness, with many neighborhoods, ballparks and landmarks sure to strike a chord with Manhattan aficionados.

Not one, but two people are murdered early on, one in a library office close to Ambler's, the other in Bryant Park near the library. The dead man in the park is a famous crime author whose papers have just been donated to the library’s crime fiction collection. Unable to help himself, Ambler begins to investigate. Not only is he an expert on every conceivable aspect and perpetrator of fictional crime, he also has the acquaintance of real-time NYPD homicide detective Mike Cosgrove, and the two hook up to look into the backstory of these oddly coincidental crimes. Working their sometimes separate, sometimes diverging trajectories, they begin the task of smoking out a murderer.

Murder at the 42nd Street Library operates on a kind of slow burn, increasing in tension—and complications—as the pages progress. In fact, at times the characters can get downright confusing. Readers may need a cheat sheet in order to keep track of Max, Nelson, Kay, Laura Lee, Lisa, Jim, Dominic, Adele, Bennie, Arthur and Harry against a convoluted backstory that involves plenty of odd marriages, extramarital dalliances, sex with minors, intrigues and betrayals. Just about everyone’s lying about something.

There’s a cool youngster named Johnny who brings a welcome air of innocence to this often-tawdry tale of adults who just can’t seem to keep their dalliances and power trips under control. Our hopes lie with Johnny and those who support and protect him.

Ambler the librarian has a disarming, low-key aura that wins us over, along with his well-calibrated iron fist/velvet glove shtick. And wait for it, there’s a honey of an unexpected ending.

Rain Dogs, the fifth in Adrian McKinty’s Detective Sean Duffy crime series, glows with luminous portraits and firmly anchored scenes. Readers don’t have to search for some kernel of illumination in what the author is saying—it’s there in plain sight, a welcome change from many of the overstuffed tomes of the current day. There’s barely a wasted word, and actions are never belabored—the phone never rings, you just get “Briiinnnggg.” Yet the book contains everything for the crime enthusiast, including a locked room (or should I say, castle), a brisk procedural, mystery with a noir look and great dialogue. It’s all set smack in the midst of the “Troubles” in 1980s Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Early one morning, a young journalist named Lily Bigelow is found dead beneath a high parapet inside the walls of the Anglo-Norman Carrickfergus castle, a tourist venue just outside Belfast. Search after search of the courtyard, dungeons and battlements appears to show that no one (unless it was the night watchman) could have killed her, though there appears to be no reason why she’d jump to her death.

Detective Duffy painstakingly retraces Lily’s tracks leading up to her death, delving into her recent conversations with fellow journalists and her assignment accompanying a Finnish trade mission to Northern Ireland as they decide whether to open a business in the Belfast area. Duffy is closely accompanied by Detective Constable Lawson, a cheeky, dead-smart lad full of dry observations—the perfect counterpoint to Duffy, who often wonders if the joke’s on him. Duffy is a flawed, vulnerable Irishman, 40-ish and struggling to convince himself—or maybe us—that his just-under-30 girlfriend isn’t too young for him. He’s fun and down to earth, and he talks to the reader in abbreviated sentences, so we’re drawn right into the snap of the book’s dialogue.

Pointedly, McKinty makes us aware of the daily dangers in Northern Ireland, as Duffy checks his car for bombs before each trip. The tragic murder of one of his colleagues is expressed simply, with stark effect. On the other hand, Duffy is full of humorous asides about his colleagues: “I said hey to some grizzled old cops who looked like rejects from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.”

McKinty’s writing is so good it makes your head spin, and Rain Dogs has it all: intriguing plot, good Irish humor and a straightforward telling.

Loren D. Estleman began his prolific career writing crime fiction back in 1976, and he’s written close to 100 books, all high in the excellence quotient. He’s considered to be a master of noir for both his PI Amos Walker series and his Westerns, most featuring U.S. Deputy Page Murdock.

Estleman’s most recent series features a film detective named Valentino, who tracks lost films as an archivist at UCLA. Shoot, the fourth book in this series, seems a perfect combination of Estleman’s many talents. Full of insider facts about Hollywood’s great Westerns and the genre’s famous stars, it offers a neat mystery with a hint of noir, and delivers a hefty dose of the author’s trademark sly humor. It’s full of deliciously unsavory characters, and we soon know better than to take any of it very seriously. After all, this is Hollywood, where “the sunsets are painted and the stairs don’t go anywhere.”

Valentino gets an invitation to a reception held at the soon-to-close Western-themed Red Montana and Dixie Day museum, hosted by Montana himself, retired as one of the last remaining cowboys of Western film and TV fame. Red draws Valentino aside and hires him for a tricky job: locate the thief who’s blackmailing the aging star over a stag film depicting his beloved wife and film co-star, Dixie, made before she became every red-blooded American boy’s image of fresh-faced, innocent, straight-shootin’ womanhood. Find the blackmailer, destroy the stolen print, and Red will gift Valentino a priceless film, Sixgun Sonata, long hidden from the public and deemed lost.

Shoot runs a gamut of sleazy Los Angeles characters that confuse, delight and amaze. In addition to the famous Montana, Valentino matches wits with a cast of Hollywood characters, including his rival film tracker, the voracious Teddie Goodman, a dragon lady complete with crimson-soled stiletto heels and “reptilian” fashion sense; a couple eager to extend their friendship in unusual directions; the unique Dixie Day herself, faded by illness and loss; Valentino’s boss, Kyle Broadhead, about to tie the knot with a smart looker half his age; and a bunch of sleazy hangers-on hoping to benefit from the Hollywood dream.

Estleman's knowledge and love of Westerns is on full display in Shoot, which is chock full of film references, stories, gab and allusions guaranteed to send you back to watching some of those old movies. Estleman even includes a filmography of his favorites.