Crime fiction groupies can usually form a pretty quick mental picture of the cop, PI or little old lady detective in any new mystery novel, and that take remains, embedded in the reader’s imagination, for the duration of the story.

In David Handler’s new series, however, it’s not easy to get a handle on Benji, whose feet meet the street for Golden Legal Services, a mom-and-son detective agency in NYC. He’s barely five-foot-six, with a baby face that looks younger than his 25 years, and he tends toward madras shorts and Converse high-tops. Still, the mental image is elusive and doesn’t intrude in the mind like Sam Spade or Hercule Poirot. Maybe it’s to Benji’s advantage, as he searches out the bad guys in Phantom Angel.

Back by popular demand after 2013’s Runaway Man, Benji is hired by aging producer and showman Morrie Frankel to find his missing “angel,” a financial backer who emerges to support—or save—a Broadway show, and who supposedly functions as an incentive for other would-be backers to pony up some cash. Morrie claims his angel is a hedge fund billionaire named R.J. Farnell, but “phantom” becomes the operative word when Farnell goes missing. Besides cultivating hedge fund managers, Morrie is in deep to the Joe Minetta crime family, who also back shows—for a hefty price. If Farnell isn’t found, Morrie claims his Broadway version of Wuthering Heights will never make it to the stage—not to mention he’ll have to watch out for Minetta’s goons.

Benji’s investigation leads to the doorstep of Farnell’s supposed girlfriend, a 19-year-old cutie nicknamed Boso. But Boso’s career as a webcam bimbo connects her to organized crime and—surprise, surprise—Minetta’s organization, and when Morrie is murdered in broad daylight on a New York street, Benji must penetrate the surface glitz to separate the good guys from the bad.

Handler’s strength lies in his stable of marvelous characters, who could be straight out of a Damon Runyon story: Benji’s mother, Hattie, retired pole dancer; Rita, his gorgeous co-worker and former erotic performer; and Cricket, an online huckster for whom no item of gossip is too sleazy.

The author has notched another urban treat full of opportunistic Broadway producers, grabby wannabe stars and the hardscrabble world of mob connections. In this book, as in New York City, it ain’t movin’ unless it’s movin’ fast.

The great Richard Price (Clockers, Lush Life) dons a new literary persona as Harry Brandt for this crackling thriller. Haunted NYPD Detective Billy Graves' very name suggests not only his bleak working hours but also a death that landed him on the, well, graveyard shift. Det. Graves is a second-generation cop and had been a rising star until a mishap killed an innocent bystander, leaving Graves with a ghost—a crook that got away.

Several of Graves’ equally dysfunctional co-workers are similarly haunted by these “whites,” bad guys “who had committed criminal obscenities . . . then walked away untouched by justice.” To call these cops flawed would be like describing the Grand Canyon as a mere hole in the ground, but they are also dedicated. Perhaps too much so, as Graves begins connecting the dots when his “white” turns up dead.

The Whites is ultimately not quite as intricate or poetic (or long) as Price’s best work. It is a great read nonetheless, laugh-out-loud funny at times, whether the source of the humor is grim, mundane or—in the case of a handcuffed lawnmower—downright absurd. Price’s best passages are rooted in his peerless urban realism, though he also has lots of fun letting the plot drift away from the realm of strict plausibility. None of this makes The Whites any less entertaining, nor should this obscure genuinely emotional elements of the story, including Graves’ shaky but loving marriage and a touching mystery involving a hematologist.

So long as your tolerance for NYPD lingo (“One PP,” anybody?) is high, and your patience for cops who bend (or obliterate) the rules even higher, The Whites is (either) an impressive debut or a high-octane addition to the already-impressive Price oeuvre.

Don’t look for a boilerplate story or predictable characters in Becky Masterman’s surprising second mystery, Fear the Darkness. There’s no letdown after Masterman’s first book, the Edgar Award finalist Rage Against the Dying. Her extraordinary heroine, 59-year-old FBI retiree Brigid Quinn, is front and center for a second time in this surprising thriller.

Who knew that all Quinn’s job-related physical and mental skills would be called into play in her life as a newlywed, as she and hubby Carlos, a priest-turned-philosophy-professor, start to enjoy their days together in sunny Tucson? As a former agent who’s lived a very private and secretive life in many different identities, Quinn is slowly adjusting to being a new wife and to making real friends for the first time. She’s shopping, gossiping, enjoying a glass of wine with new friend Mallory, hiking and attending church socials and local events.

But there are threats in the most unexpected places and hiding just below the surface in the most unlikely people. After her sister-in-law dies following a long illness, Quinn fulfills a promise by taking in her 17-year-old niece, Gemma-Kate. The girl seems oddly unemotional and occasionally disconnected, causing Quinn to wonder whether Gemma-Kate is involved in the odd occurrences that begin to crop up.

The book’s multilayered characters continue to offer surprises, including Mallory’s bedridden husband, Owen, paralyzed in an accident and unable to speak; and Owen’s doctor, Tim Neilsen, and his wan, lost-looking wife, Jacquie. There’s an added sense of menace when she agrees to look into the strange death of the Neilsens’ son, after she picks up a piece of paper on which Jacquie has secretly scribbled “Help me.”

As Quinn’s unease mounts, she begins to wonder whom she can trust. This story thrives on the unexpected and unforeseen, and as tension builds, readers can expect a plot that morphs into something bigger than a curious death or two. There’s something to boggle the mind on nearly every page and a death-defying scene near the finale that’ll curl your hair. The monsters in the shadows—the ones we thought were completely exaggerated—are only too real.

The members of the Last Death Club are kicking the bucket one by one, some of them practically under the nose of irascible Victorian detective Sidney Grice, in The Curse of the House of Foskett. It’s the second book in M.R.C. Kasasian’s intriguing new series that debuted in 2014 with The Mangle Street Murders, featuring Grice and his young ward, March Middleton, who narrates the books in a most unusual fashion.

Death Club member Horatio Green approaches Grice, asking him to investigate the suspicious passing of one of the club’s original seven members, whose wills collectively stipulate that the last living member will reap all the financial benefits that have accrued in the combined coffers. During the interview, Green suddenly drops dead in Grice’s study, leaving just five members still alive. As March and her guardian begin their investigation, members continue to die in bizarre, unpleasant ways.

Kasasian has a macabre sense of humor, or perhaps it’s just a heightened sense of the macabre. Graphic descriptions can be black enough to corrode the soul—or they may leave you relishing each page, depending on your capacity for unsavory, sometimes tongue-in-cheek details. During a tidy Victorian dinner scene, we learn that the napkin ring is fashioned from a human femur. Floors, handkerchiefs and faces are never clean; the London streets are dark and rainy; one death club member sits in the filth of a decaying mansion, hidden behind a sheen of black gauze. At the same time, each page is shot through with dry humor and clever ripostes, including some humdinger non sequiturs from housemaid Molly.

The book’s period details are impeccable. Each murder is clever and twisty, and the methods employed by the unconventional—one might even say mad—detective duo may leave you shaking, though only occasionally with laughter.

Side stories are engrossing in their own right: the ongoing mystery behind the story of March and her now-dead lover, Edward; hints of a strange past involving Grice and one club member, who happens to be one of the “cursed” members of the titular Foskett family; and the quiet tie growing between March and a police detective she has nearly killed (unintentionally).

Readers alternate between exasperation at these eccentric characters and the desire to read more and more about them in this absorbing and provocative series.

The first book in a new crime series, Winter at the Door introduces Lizzie Snow, a Boston cop turned police chief, now ensconced in the remote town of Bearkill in northern Maine’s Aroostook County, which runs right up against the Canadian border. Bearkill barely manages the necessities with a supermarket, Laundromat, luncheonette and corner bar appropriately named Area 51.

It’s not her first choice for a working venue, but the “grim little town miles from anywhere” may offer a clue to the whereabouts of Lizzie’s young niece, Nicki, who went missing after her mother’s death eight years before. The child’s body was never found, and Lizzie desperately hopes there is substance to a slim lead involving a youngster who’s living somewhere in this area.

Besides adjusting to a new location and searching Maine’s dark corners on her personal quest, Lizzie is confounded by a spate of mysterious crimes and a killer who lurks just out of reach. The deaths are one reason Lizzie’s smart and steady new boss, Sheriff Cody Chevrier, is counting on her fresh eyes to separate what looks like accident from premeditated murder. There are many puzzles to decipher in Winter at the Door, and the primary one is why so many local ex-cops are suddenly meeting an unexpected death.

Another conundrum involves Lizzie’s former lover and the cause of her recent heartbreak, state police detective Dylan Hudson. Dylan is the source of the information on Nicki, but how much substance is there to his timely lead?

This twisted, gritty tale is full of wintry touches, but for all of its atmosphere it takes a surprisingly superficial approach, even with a potentially fascinating cast of characters. Many scenes sacrifice depth and nuance for a screenplay veneer, and Dylan lacks the panache to be a devastatingly attractive lover. Still, the snow-muffled setting works well, leading readers into the heart of a thankless and dangerous darkness, one that will continue to lure as the series progresses.

The eccentric and purposeful Lady Lavinia Truelove enters her stables early in the morning, unseen by her peers, where she plans to subdue and ride the erratic, untamable Lucifer. She’ll show her husband that she’s a horsewoman to be reckoned with, as well as two sights higher than the woman she thinks may be capturing her husband’s eye.

Moments later, she is dead, neck broken, lying under the horse’s massive hooves. Horrified stable boys rush to sound the alarm.

So begins Enter Pale Death, a 12th installment in Brit author Barbara Cleverly’s Joe Sandilands crime series set in the era between the momentous World Wars. The Scotland Yard assistant commissioner is flummoxed by a death that is surely one of “misadventure” (the stable boys are scarified witnesses), yet seems to have been death by intent, as it becomes apparent that several people stand to benefit from the lady’s sudden demise—husband James included.

Sandilands travels from London to the scene of the crime deep in rural Suffolk on the North Sea coast and makes the acquaintance of Adam Hunnyton, local police chief and character extraordinaire, who wants to use Sandilands’ eyes for a second look at the crime—and various Truelove family members. Sandilands soon discovers that Dorcas, the woman he hopes to marry, was a guest at the Truelove estate on the eve of Lavinia’s death, and to complicate matters, Dorcas is the very woman that James Truelove may have his eye on.  

Cleverly delivers a witty, atmospheric and well-conceived slice of British crime, an old-fashioned country brew that includes a wood haunted by the Wild Green Man of Britain’s pagan past and a treasure trove of equine lore that traces back to an ancient brotherhood of horsemen. One entrancing and colorful encounter takes place in a field as the urbanized Sandilands encounters a herd of prancing, curious horses, and his store of equine knowledge stands him in excellent stead.

At times Cleverly can be a bit too nonchalant and chatty, detracting from the story’s atmosphere, but her marvelous descriptions of country lore and an evocative Suffolk countryside setting provide a taste of all things British and may send curious readers scurrying to the library to learn more about the ancient traditions in this most ancient of lands.

Forty Days without Shadow, by French journalist Olivier Truc, is set in the remote Lapland of northern Norway, where reindeer are the only livelihood for indigenous Sami herders who brave the dark, Arctic winters to keep vigil over their animals, and where the old ways—even ritualized murder—can still hold sway.

Truc’s chilling debut won 15 international awards after its publication in 2012, and it is now available in English, thanks to a compelling translation by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Translations sometimes have an awkward feel to them at the outset of a book, but as readers continue on, the unusual sentence structure develops a cadence of its own and becomes an integral part of the narrative. Lalaurie’s translation creates a chilling mood that mimics the haunting green glimmer of the Northern Lights.

Senior Sami police officer Klemet Nango and his freshman deputy, Nina Nansen, investigate two crimes: the theft of a unique Sami drum once used by the region’s shamans, whose rituals can be traced back to the area’s oldest mythology; and the brutal murder of an old reindeer herder. The detective team’s radically different backgrounds and approaches to the murder scene, in a setting full of omens and danger, make for a fascinating juxtaposition of old and new ways. Old practices clash with conservative Lutheran groups and geologists who are out to exploit the region’s vast mineral reserves for plunder and profit.

The book’s title describes a seminal moment in far northern Lapland, as 40 days without any sunlight to cast a shadow slowly give way to a magical, goose pimple-raising sequence when the community gathers to watch the sun appear once more over the horizon: “Everyone fixed their gaze on the horizon. The magnificent gleam intensified, reflecting more and more brightly. . . . Now, a bright, trembling halo of light blurred the point on the horizon at which everyone was gazing. . . . The sun had kept its word.”

A dramatic snowbound setting mixes with unexpected touches of humor to make this book one of the most riveting of the season.

In this, the 11th of Christopher Fowler’s superb Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries, it’s clearer than ever that the real hero of the series is London herself. If you’ve never visited the city, you could ask for no better education—or pressing invitation—than the one you’ll receive by reading the entire series. Fowler not only tells delightfully lurid tales of both famous and well-hidden landmarks, but also provides clear warnings about neighborhoods you should avoid (after all, these are murder mysteries).

Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart finds detectives Arthur Bryant and John May tackling the bizarre case of a reanimated corpse seen rising out of its grave in a forgotten corner of a Bloomsbury public garden. Both high-school punks and high financiers are implicated, along with morticians, necromancers and medical-school dropouts.

Apart from the elusive murderer(s?), the villain of the piece is the bureaucratic nightmare of the London Constabulary, personified by a barely-human being with the implausible name of Orion Banks, who . . . but no, I shall not give that away.

Bryant embodies all the peculiarity of Fowler’s narrative gifts. There is great goodness and camaraderie at the heart of the story. It’s so much bleeding fun.

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sometimes telling a story is all about retelling—tracing the thread of a long-ago series of events and finally getting it right. Minnesota student Joe Talbert discovers this when he is tasked with writing a senior citizen’s biography for a college English class. Short on options and time, Joe heads to Hillview Manor nursing home in search of potential subjects. There he meets Carl Iverson, a dying Vietnam vet who’s out on parole after serving a 30-year sentence for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Crystal Hagen. Joe dreads writing his story: “I had come to Hillview looking for a hero, and instead, found a villain.”

But the man whom his research reveals is far from a one-dimensional bad guy. Joe meets Carl’s army buddy, Virgil, who witnessed Carl’s acts of heroism and insists that his friend is no killer. Then Joe spots a telling detail from an old crime scene photo—one that was overlooked at the trial. He begins to suspect there’s much more to the story than the secretive old man is telling him. But if Carl didn’t murder Crystal, why did he never proclaim his innocence? What really happened to him in Vietnam? And is the real killer still walking free?

Joe turns amateur sleuth, aided by his attractive but standoffish neighbor, Lila. Then his mother is jailed for DUI, leaving him to care for his autistic brother. As his search for clues becomes more dangerous, he begins to wonder if he’ll have to choose between college and the claims of family. Allan Eskens’ compulsively suspenseful first novel reveals that guilt takes many forms—and that getting the story right is essential.