Author Colin Cotterill has penned a new offbeat mystery series, and the first installment kindles in the mind like fireworks that bloom in showers of light. Killed at the Whim of a Hat is one of the most aptly titled books I’ve seen in a long time, and by far the best book I’ve read in an age.

Crime reporter Jimm Juree, recently of Bangkok, is down in the dumps. Her dreams of being promoted to senior crime reporter at Bangkok’s Chiang Mai Mail are dashed after her mother purchases a crumbling tourist resort in the tiny village of Maprao, far afield in southern Thailand, and the family moves, lock, stock and barrel.

Jimm’s bad luck at being in the pit of no-news land seems to change when a visiting abbot at the nearby temple is violently murdered. There’s also an odd skeleton or two, discovered buried deep in mud in a 1970s VW bus. Jimm seems on her way to a breaking news story or three. She gets a lot of help from crafty Lieutenant Chompu of the local police force and from her wondrously odd family. Together they make sense of the bizarre events.

A solid plot runs neck and neck with the plain and simple joy of reading a crackerjack narrative filled with droll humor and small asides that are never throwaways. In the current world of detective novels—where quick comebacks and sarcasm pass for humor and where characters jockey for top position as most snide or most trendy—this stands out as a beautifully crafted look at life with a Thai twist. Thankfully, Cotterill’s characters are so easy to picture they jump right off the page, yet are straight out of the town of whimsy.

Cotterill’s language is musical, with an offbeat cadence. What’s not to like in a book where you can read, of the crime scene: “From the road it didn’t look like anything special but when you got to the top of the dirt track you could clearly see that it really was nothing special.” Or where you can taste beer that “arrived so cold it poured like sleet from the bottle.” This stuff, on nearly every page, boggles the mind.

And I mustn’t forget an unsung hero named Sticky Rice. But you’ll have to read the book yourself to really get the hang of it all.

Can a book be dark and delightful at the same time? Author Elly Griffiths has just published her second Ruth Galloway mystery, The Janus Stone, set once again amid the grey seas and ever-changing tides of North Norfolk, England, where Ruth makes her home. With her perceptive, witty writing style, Griffiths has again brought her characters to the forefront, and readers will relish their return in a story that scores equally high on the scare and smile charts.

Ruth, who’s a forensic archaeologist, is investigating the remains of a child’s bones, discovered beneath the front doorstep of a turreted Victorian mansion, being demolished by developer Edward Spens to become an improbable “seventy-five luxury apartments” with “spacious landscaped gardens.” Among other tenants, the Gothic structure once housed the former Sacred Heart Children’s Home, but who and what else did it shelter? The original entrance arch, slated to remain standing, reads: Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit—“Everything changes, nothing perishes.”

In case you missed the first book (don’t!), Ruth is now three months pregnant, and the father, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson of the Norwich police force, is very much present in this engrossing story that manages to be scary and romantic at the same time. Trouble is, Harry is happily married with two teenage daughters, so the identity of the baby’s father is a secret. But this is not a relationship that Harry, or indeed Ruth, is passing off as just a one-night stand. Instead, deeply drawn to one another, the twosome struggle with how to find a way through a seemingly impossible scenario.

Threading through the storyline are a series of inviting characters, both familiar and new: Ruth’s friend, chemistry lab assistant and sometime druid Cathbad, with his fine sixth sense and flowing purple cape, is front and center here; and there’s the enigmatic and attractive Dr. Max Grey; blue-eyed Father Hennessey; frail Sister Immaculata; friend Shona, with her love affair woes; and a host of ancillaries who add adrenaline, depth and mystery to this remarkable story.

The history surrounding this Victorian property makes for an engrossing archaeological dig, as we uncover layer after layer of intrigue surrounding the old estate’s former occupants. And little by little, too, we’re getting to know more about Ruth and Harry, who are beginning to seem like friends.

Readers unfamiliar with Charles Todd’s superlative Ian Rutledge mystery series, set in Britain in the aftermath of World War I, will soon learn that the Scotland Yard detective carries scars from his own service in the Great War. He’s haunted by the voice of Corporal Hamish MacLeod, whose refusal to follow a direct military order to lead his battle-weary men into yet another deadly skirmish ended in his execution by military firing squad—on Rutledge’s orders. Rutledge, himself a victim of shell shock, or what we’d now surely call post-traumatic stress disorder, finds the voice of Hamish echoing in his mind, throughout his waking hours and in his nightmares.

In A Lonely Death, Rutledge is faced with the deaths of four young men from the town of Eastfield in Sussex, all of whom served in the war, and who are murdered in separate incidents, each garroted and with the military identity disc of another, unknown, soldier in their mouths. With little to go on, Rutledge, alternately helped and hampered by Hamish’s warning voice, sets out to find the killer, someone who must be closely connected with the town and with the backgrounds of these returning soldiers.

In Eastfield, Rutledge deals with a slew of red herrings as he meets the townspeople, including a stiff-necked brewery owner; a teacher at the Misses Tate Latin School who has ties to the victims as schoolboys; a housewife caring for her war-injured husband; and police constables, inspectors, and sergeants galore. The plot leads the reader up many garden paths before yielding up clues that shed light on the tragic events. Rutledge searches for the elusive Daniel Pierce, brother of one of the victims, and seeks to uncover the identity of another shadowy figure: a long-forgotten fellow student from the boys’ childhood days and a victim of their schoolboy pranks.

As much an ongoing character study of a haunted man and war survivor as it is a mystery story, this complex and dark entry in a fine series will yield treasures to the patient reader, with its many threads of romance cut off by war’s tragedy and separation, including Rutledge’s encounter with the woman he loves, herself searching for a husband missing in action. These are among the harrowing legacies, sympathetically told, of a war that still rages within many of its survivors, and whose scars will take many a year to heal.

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.