Dara Barr, documentary filmmaker and protagonist of Elmore Leonard’s latest, Djibouti, is a tough girl. This hard-driving, hard-drinking Academy Award winner has to be tough, after all. Along with her trusty cameraman, a genial six-and-a-half-foot-tall African-American chap named Xavier, she’s made films of Bosnian women, neo-Nazis and the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Dara’s latest, riskiest project is filming the pirates of Somalia, who, fortified by cheekfuls of khat and AK47s slung over their shoulders, think nothing of taking over supertankers from their rickety little skiffs. The piracy brings in millions of dollars that fund everything from luxury cars to prostitutes to beachfront mansions to more khat. Loot floating around brings complications, and things get very complicated very quickly.

Dara and her friends quickly get mixed up with an Al Qaeda psychopath who doesn’t want people to know his real name as much as he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement. Dara and Xavier encounter this maniac several times and are no more frightened of him than they would be of any other drinking buddy—an impressive feat, and one that’s necessary if they want to finish their movie. Then there’s the tanker full of liquid natural gas—a floating bomb, in other words—and rumor has it that the killer’s jihadi pals would just love to light it up if a cut of ransom money isn’t forthcoming. That is, unless someone else gets to the ship first.

Told in short, punchy chapters, Djibouti, with its East African setting and focus on topical Somali piracy, might seem a departure for Leonard, but it’s not. Once again, he concentrates on crooks, moviemakers and other hustlers, folks whose moral compass, if they have one, might be a little askew, who let nothing get in the way of their goals, and whose bravery seems indistinguishable from foolhardiness. Djibouti is a nasty good time.

Some writers ease the reader into their story, but Nancy Pickard dives right in with The Scent of Rain and Lightning. By page six, she has set up the framework of her novel and by the end of the first chapter, the reader is hooked on a tale of murder, mystery, family and love.

Jody Linder is infamous in the town of Rose, Kansas. On a dark and stormy night 23 years earlier, someone shot and killed Jody’s father; her mother disappeared and is presumably dead. From that night on, three-year-old Jody Linder was a girl with a story. Now Jody’s three uncles have upsetting news: Billy Crosby, the man convicted of killing her parents, has been released from prison and granted a new trial, thanks to the effort of Billy’s lawyer son, Collin. After years of comfortably living with justice—knowing the man who killed her parents is behind bars—Jody’s world crumbles as everything she has believed is thrown into question.

If anyone can understand the notoriety surrounding Jody, it’s Collin. The same town that coddled Jody treated Collin like a pariah as the two grew up side by side. Despite avoiding each other for their entire lives, Jody and Collin have a connection, and with this new case, Jody begins to see that hers was not the only life affected by this tragedy.

Against the backdrop of a small town like Rose, the reader understands how one event can define both a town and its people’s history. The standout feature of this novel is Pickard’s creation of complex characters that are deeply tied to history and setting. The characters are flawed, possessing feelings that aren’t resolved and struggling with the idea of accepting a new version of the truth. Pickard constructs a puzzle of interlocking events into which, as the story progresses, we slowly see how each character fits. The Scent of Rain and Lightning grabs you from the beginning, and Pickard holds you until the end, keeping you guessing the whole way through.

Over the course of six novels, a growing number of readers have followed the adventures of Maisie Dobbs, a former nurse turned private investigator in 1930s England. The series’ strength lies in its portrayal of a society turned upside down after the huge losses suffered in World War I and the resulting changes in the class system and the lives of women, who had taken the place of men in the workplace during the war and often had to continue doing so afterwards. Recent installments had become somewhat routine, with little change coming to Maisie’s personal life or monastic Plimco flat—but this seventh outing brings a big payoff, without sacrificing the series’ quiet appeal.

The Mapping of Love and Death finds Maisie facing yet another mystery rooted in the Great War. The remains of Michael Clifton, an American cartographer who leant his skills to the British during the war, have been discovered in a bunker. X-rays show that the young man may not have died with his fellow soldiers when their camp was shelled, and his parents have come to Maisie for answers. Papers found near Michael’s body hint at a love affair with a woman who refers to herself simply as “The English Nurse.” Could she be the key to discovering why someone wanted to kill Michael? Maisie’s search will, as usual, take her back to her past, but this time the journey opens up new paths for the future as she embarks on an unexpected romance and meets with a turning point in her career.

As always, Maisie is an appealing heroine. Strong, intelligent, capable, empathetic—if a bit reserved—she faces threats without flinching and brings healing to her clients. Jacqueline Winspear’s assured writing (she is a Brit who currently lives in California) is as calm and measured as her heroine, and contains subtle touches that give the series its ring of period authenticityThe Mapping of Love and Death will leave Maisie’s many fans eager to see what her next adventure will bring.

RELATED CONTENT
Read an interview with Jacqueline Winspear
Read a review of Messenger of Truth

Amelia Peabody is back, but this time she’s not returning to Egypt, her usual stomping ground. The 19th installment in this immensely popular series finds Elizabeth Peters’ iconoclast detective in Palestine, where she’s gone with her husband, the famous (and devastatingly handsome) Egyptologist, Radcliffe Emerson, to stop a careless adventurer from wrecking archaeological havoc while searching for the Ark of the Covenant. That would be enough to motivate Amelia to save the day—but there’s concern within the British government that Morley is not just archaeologically inept, but also a German spy.

Amelia’s son, Ramses, is already in Palestine, working on a dig. Before his family can reach him, he’s taken prisoner, caught in the middle of a nefarious scheme involving forgery and international intrigue.

What follows is all those things readers love about Peters’ novels: perfectly paced suspense, biting wit and fascinating tidbits about ancient cultures. It’s a pleasure to dip back into the Emersons’ lives. Instead of continuing their story after World War I, Peters has chosen to cover some more of their “lost years,” this time taking us back to 1910, and it’s a delight to once again see Amelia and Emerson at the peak of their physical prowess (yes, Amelia has prowess), and to see Ramses and his friend (more like a brother), David, honing the skills that will serve them so well in the future.

Peters is well established as a master when it comes to character development, and she takes full opportunity to further flesh out our old friends in this book. Emerson has always viewed religion with more than casual skepticism, and putting him in the Holy Land is a treat for readers. He and Amelia spar about theology in the way only they can—acerbic and humorous all at once. The dialogue between the two is a consistent highlight throughout the series.

Best of all, Peters, with a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, can always be relied on to present readers with an accurate, well-researched view of the historical periods in which she sets her books. She gets every detail right, from archaeological techniques to cultural mores. A River in the Sky is a charming, entertaining read, full of all the good things we expect from Amelia Peabody. Including her infamous steel-tipped parasol.

Tasha Alexander is the author of the Lady Emily Ashton series. She lives in Chicago, unfortunately without a parasol of any sort.

Too much historical fiction relies on the tragedy of history’s grand sweep overwhelming little lives. Instead, Robert Goddard flips the switch and subordinates historical events to the fates of his protagonists in Long Time Coming. Governments and armies may determine history; but Goddard keeps firmly in our minds that it is individuals who suffer and occasionally even survive it. Humphrey Bogart’s famously ironic “hill of beans” line in Casablanca comes to mind. Goddard’s heroes and villains in Long Time Coming may not be quite as colorful in their parting shots, but they are every bit as compelling.

In this case, the war is World War II, the place London (and later, Antwerp), the time shifting between 1940 and 1976. Two disturbing historical facts set the scene: First, Ireland remained stubbornly neutral during the war; and second, in the years leading up to the war, a handful of Belgian merchants—mainly Jewish—made a killing (the wording is, alas, all too accurate) from the brutal diamond mines in the Congo. The historical data in question would be easy fodder for (respectively) anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Semitism, as they are at certain points in this novel. But the author refuses to make his complex case pliable to any straightforward ethical assessment. Goddard cares only for how this particular person experiences this crisis and is transformed or destroyed by it, according to character and luck.

The Englishman Eldritch Swan—long thought dead—spent 36 years in an Irish prison. Now he and his nephew Stephen must find proof that a set of Picassos was forged. Why is this eccentric undertaking so crucial? How do private passions give meaning to the enormities of history? Shakespeare knew the answer. So did Dickens and Conrad. Now the knowledge has passed to fearless weavers of intimate histories like Robert Goddard. 

“But Flavia can’t be dead!” this reviewer thought as she read the first page of Alan Bradley’s latest novel starring the 11-year-old sleuth-cum-toxicologist, Flavia de Luce. Further reading reveals that of course she’s not dead, but only pretending to be. Like any other lonely and somewhat neglected child, Flavia wonders what her hateful sisters and distracted, widowed father would make of her death. Her conclusion: not much.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag picks up where 2009’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pieleft off, and like the first book, this one mines the vein of human sadness that exists alongside the fun and skullduggery. Along with Flavia’s isolation—she may not be the only living child in Bishop’s Lacey, but it feels like she is—Bradley’s far-reaching examination of the consequences of terrible grief and guilt add depth and poignancy to the book.

As Flavia lies in the cemetery contemplating her own demise, she hears weeping and goes to find a woman, Nialla, stretched out on a nearby grave. She turns out to be the assistant of Rupert Porson, a famous puppet master. He’s also a brute, especially to his many lovers, of whom Nialla is the latest. Soon there’s a murder at one of the puppet shows Porson puts on for the town, and Flavia goes to work, armed only with her chemistry set, her beat-up old bicycle and her preternatural intelligence.

It’s almost as if the Flavia books are the reminiscences of an eccentric pensioner, for it’s hard to see even a brilliant 11-year-old fully understanding all the grown-up tribulations (adultery, among other things) she encounters in the crimes she solves. But there’s also humor, as when Flavia injects a box of chocolates with swamp gas to show up her sister, or in the amazement of the town police when they find—again!—that she’s one step ahead of them. It’s both the humor and the pathos that keep Flavia from being annoying and unbelievable, like Charles Wallace Murry, the smugly infallible boy genius from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic, A Wrinkle in Time.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, for all its tragedy, is still a delight from the inimitable Alan Bradley.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Call me Rusty.

BookPage (or rather, a certain BookPage writer) asked me to review the second in Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mystery series. I’d rather be a pirate (B’arrrrrrrgh!), but the book was written by Chet, a dog, and deserves the attention of the author’s peers. So, being “one of my guys,” as Chet puts it, I’m happy to lend a paw.

To begin with, this book looks good and smells good. (Chews well, too, though a little pulpy in the middle.) Chet, a dog of an unrecognizable breed, works alongside his godlike human, Bernie Little, Private Investigator. They check out a mysterious case of dognapping, involving a “tiny fluffball” named Princess. Princess came to town for the Great Western Dog Show and disappeared somewhere into the dry gulches and canyons—along with her ill-fated owner, an Italian contessa, and Suzie, Bernie’s girlfriend.

Details are sometimes hazy, but Chet is more observant than your average dog. (Present company excluded.) His soliloquies often involve taking human metaphors literally, as in pondering the connection of poles to Polish sausage.

Life is always great for Chet, as for all of us dogs, so don’t expect any noir here. But he is not unphilosophical—“whatever that is,” as he often says modestly. Dogito ergo sum (“I am a dog, therefore I am”) appears to be his ruling concept, though not in so many words, of course. I did notice that he can’t seem to bark Latin. So few dogs, ahem, can.

Any reader with a nose for nastiness may sniff out the perp early on, but the real fun is in Chet’s take on humans and their world. He’s not above expressing his amazement at the many ways in which dogs are superior (hearing, smelling, etc.). Still, he retains an unqualified love for his human, and he expresses universal truths eloquently—like the superiority of bacon chew strips over other forms of entertainment.

Great job. Good Spencer.

Rusty lives with his owner, Maude McDaniel, in Cumberland, Maryland.

In the opening pages of Darling Jim, the American debut from Danish writer Christian Moerk, three women are found horribly murdered in a house in Dublin, Ireland, and local police are left with more questions than answers. It appears that Moira Hegarty had imprisoned her nieces, Fiona and Roisin Walsh, and was slowly poisoning them to death. But from the shovel marks on Moira’s forehead, at least one of them fought back. Even more intriguing, it looks as though a third prisoner might have escaped.

This gothic story-within-a-story is told through the diaries of the two dead girls and a third-person narrative following Niall, a young postman who’d prefer to be a comic book artist. After he discovers Fiona’s diary in the dead-letter bin, Niall feels compelled to find out what happened in that house.

Fiona’s diary introduces us to Jim Quick, a traditional Irish storyteller or seanchaí, who roars into Fiona’s town on a vintage red motorcycle and proceeds to seduce half the inhabitants with his stories, and the other half with his good looks and slick moves. Unfortunately, some of the latter group have turned up dead, and the seduced and discarded Fiona is determined to figure out if Jim and his mysterious cohort, Tomo, are involved. When Jim sets his sights on Moira, a fragile and desperate woman, Fiona and her sisters, Roisin and Aiofe, are destined to become too involved to turn back. Once the sisters get too close to the truth, Jim turns his violent nature on Aiofe.

When Niall’s obsession threatens his job, he decides to uncover the rest of the story in another diary, this one written by Roisin. Foiled in turn by a precocious student and her father bent on justice, and a cop eaten up with guilt, Niall finally gets his hands on the prize and the story continues as told by the second troubled Walsh sister. But what has become of the third?

Thick with Irish atmosphere and colloquialisms and peopled with characters right out of the darkest of fables, Darling Jim is a page-turning tribute to the art, history and power of classic storytelling.

Kristy Kiernan is the author of Matters of Faith.

If there are any lingering doubts that Alan Furst is our premiere writer of historical spy fiction, his 10th novel, The Spies of Warsaw, will put them to rest. No one sets the tone of the dangerous shadows and the consequences of misjudgment quite like Furst – and he also keeps the reader guessing about who is trustworthy and who isn't, which makes for a highly entertaining read.

The novel opens in the fall of 1937, when the assembly of the next great war machine from Germany is resonating throughout Europe. There can be no doubt that war is coming. Enter our hero, a military attache from the French embassy, Col. Jean-Francois Mercier, suave and dapper, a decorated hero of World War I with the requisite amount of courage and testosterone.

As if an imminent war weren't enough to keep Mercier busy, he is in love with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, Anna, who is a lawyer for the League of Nations. Matters get sticky when one of his lower-level spies becomes convinced the Gestapo is on to him. This is when Furst really kicks his novel into gear, casting suspicion on every character Mercier has to deal with. He spares us no mischievous nuance in the persona of people such as the Russian defectors Viktor and Malka Rozen, Dr. Lapp, a senior German officer in Warsaw, or the vicious Maj. August Voss of SS counterintelligence.

If peril cast an aroma, its miasma would hover over each page of The Spies of Warsaw. Furst is a master at setting, and his depiction of Warsaw and the surrounding Polish countryside is rife with the grim spectacle of a nation teetering on war. Perhaps this is why the few moments that Col. Mercier can manage with his lover, Anna, seem both so tender and erotically charged. You may never take a train ride again without wondering who the mysterious character is in the seat next to you.

Michael Lee is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.