Longtime fans of mystery giant Dick Francis may be surprised, but also pleased, to know that, after a six-year publishing hiatus and at the ripe old age of 86 the master has returned with a new novel. Under Orders finds Francis in solid, if unspectacular, form, as his popular hero, 38-year-old jockey-turned-detective Sid Halley, prosthetic left hand and all, is once again mired in murderous doings on the British horse-racing scene. When jockey Huw Walker is shot three times through the heart, police suspicion focuses on trainer Bill Burton, an old ex-jockey pal of Halley’s. Burton has discovered his wife’s affair with Walker, so the motive looks right until Burton himself turns up dead. Halley is initially hired by wealthy politico and horse owner Lord Enstone to probe into matters, but soon enough the sleuth perceives too many crooked angles in the case to resist launching his own determined investigation.

Francis has definitely entered the 21st century with this tale, as subplots abound concerning Internet gambling and computer technology. Yet devotees of Francis’ previous 40-odd books will undoubtedly welcome the familiar racetrack setting, the author’s insider knowledge of the sport of kings and the cast of colorful, distinctive characters. As always, Halley is a delight worldly, savvy, cagily following instincts that elude the local constabulary, his dialogue filled with witty, jaded observations. In the course of events, Halley draws personal support from his ex-father-in-law Charles, finds rapprochement with ex-wife Jenny, and becomes closer to his new love interest, the courageous, plucky and beautiful Marina van der Meer.

On a plotting level, Francis carefully withholds tidbits of evidence to keep the reader guessing, then Halley exposes all in one big revelatory scene, which spurs the novel on to its combative climax. The device works, but the way the conclusion comes about seems a bit pat. Nevertheless, there’s ambience aplenty, Halley remains a compelling leading man, and there’s a lot of good writing to be savored along the way. The punters will love it.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

Part thriller, part visionary quest, Kathleen McGowan’s The Expected One plunges the reader into yet another search for the real Mary Magdalene. In the novel, American author Maureen Paschal seeks verifiable facts when researching her book about women maligned by traditional historians. But following the trail of Mary Magdalene soon takes her on a personal journey as well. In Jerusalem, Maureen slips into a compelling vision of a woman who must be Mary. Haunting dreams follow, pointing to clues about Mary and Maureen’s relationship to her. Then, a stranger, the eccentric Berenger Sinclair, invites Maureen to a party at his estate in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, enticing her with a promise of information about her father, who died under mysterious circumstances when Maureen was a child. But she meets resistance from her cousin, Jesuit priest Peter Healy. While Maureen doesn’t share Peter’s love of the Church, he’s her only living relative and protector. Sinclair makes the outrageous claim that Maureen is the prophesied Expected One, a woman of the lineage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, the only one who can find the missing gospels that Mary wrote. Sinclair belongs to a secret society that has traced Mary’s lineage through many famous descendants. But other societies exist in the area, with ruthless members ready to kill to stop Sinclair’s group and destroy the elusive treasure that could redefine Christianity. Interwoven with Maureen’s adventures are glimpses of Mary and snippets of her hidden gospels. As the truth emerges, the narrative moves to Mary herself and offers one more perspective on this enigmatic figure. In an afterword, McGowan thanks Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, whose 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail popularized the idea that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and that the couple’s descendants are alive today and who attempted to sue Dan Brown for using their claims in The Da Vinci Code. The Expected One is an intriguing take on Mary’s story. Janet Fisher writes from Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Haunted by the darkness that still lived inside him, James Lee Burke’s charismatic Detective Dave Robicheaux of New Iberia, Louisiana, confronts his most challenging case yet in the highly recommended Pegasus Descending. Trish Klein, a shrewd young woman whose last name is entirely too familiar to Robicheaux, has already attracted the attention of federal authorities by passing counterfeit $100 bills. However, Robicheaux soon realizes that Klein’s presence in his town probably means that even bigger trouble will soon be on its way.

Beautiful 18-year-old Yvonne Darbonne has apparently committed suicide, and nobody who knew her has a clue as to why. Then, in a separate cold-case investigation into an obvious hit-and-run homicide, Robicheaux follows an obscure clue that will lead him to question Darbonne’s boyfriend, Tony Lujan, the son of a prominent but notorious Louisiana businessman. When young Lujan is then brutally murdered, Robicheaux discovers clues that link the death to someone associated with Trish Klein’s father.

These incidents lead Robicheaux into a world of moral insanity populated by innocent victims, marginalized people with blood-spattered souls and habitual offenders in league with the forces of darkness. A recovering alcoholic homicide detective with a long history of violence, Robicheaux quickly realizes that he may have never had a more perplexing case. Yet he will ultimately discover that he has never had a case with a more ironic solution. This powerful, paradoxical story of redemption and vengeance is the exemplary work of a writer who is clearly at the top of his game. Enriched by the presence of the resourceful yet flawed Robicheaux probably the most fascinating protagonist in contemporary crime fiction as well as complex characterizations, luminous prose and profound observations of human nature, Burke’s new novel may be his very best.

What if you were the teenage golden boy of a small town, and you saw something you shouldn’t have seen? What if the only way to stay safe is to keep silent, and disappear? What happens when you’re ready to come home again? In The Virgin of Small Plains, award-winning mystery writer Nancy Pickard tells the story of Mitch, Abby and Rex, best friends in idyllic Small Plains, Kansas. When Rex, his brother and their father the local sheriff find the naked body of a young woman in a cow pasture during a blizzard, the teenagers’ lives change in ways they never anticipated. Overnight, Mitch disappears, leaving both his girlfriend and his best buddy feeling abandoned. Over the next decade and a half, life goes on, though with Mitch’s continued absence, neither Abby nor Rex ever feels complete. The townspeople chip in to bury the unidentified girl. Inexplicably, strange miracles occur, and in death, the girl acquires a new identity and a power she lacked in life. Those who ask her help in curing the sick start calling her the Virgin.

After his mother’s death in another snowstorm, Mitch decides that 17 years away is long enough. Determined to get his revenge on the town and the men he feels abandoned him, Mitch settles in to a ranch house his family rarely uses and begins buying property in town. His unexpected encounters with Abby and Rex reopen the wounds all three carry from the night of the Virgin’s death. When Mitch meets another young woman seeking a miracle, his desire for revenge is transformed into a healing force. In an unfolding series of revelations, Abby, Mitch and Rex now sheriff himself discover the truth about the Virgin, and their own families. Pickard handles the shifts between 1987 and the present deftly. She gets inside the hearts and minds of wounded teenagers, and shows how they became strong, capable but still vulnerable adults. The Virgin of Small Plains is a powerful novel that will keep you reading way past bedtime. Leslie Budewitz writes from northwest Montana.

Try to think of someone in our culture who enjoys unquestioned access to both the highest chambers of power and the lowest regions of squalor; someone who is trusted by all because he poses no threat, and thus has in his keeping more information than anyone else possibly could. Who would it be? The cable guy? The pizza deliverer? In Jason Goodwin’s Istanbul of 1836, it is Yashim Togalu, a fellow who can walk as freely into the sultan’s harem as into a coffeehouse. Why such freedom? Because he is a eunuch. Having been castrated in his youth, he holds the keys to the Sublime Porte, the capital of the Ottoman Empire the most beautiful and dangerous city in the world, and the fabulous site of Goodwin’s new mystery, The Janissary Tree.

When a harem girl and a member of the royal guard are found murdered on the same day, the sultan and the head military officer immediately hand the case over to Investigator Yashim. Time is short: The sultan will review the New Guard in 10 days, and if the mysterious deaths (others follow hard upon the first two) are not cleared up by then, the precarious stability of the empire may once again crumble. Goodwin’s mid-career crossover from nonfiction to detective novels (this is the first in a projected series) is a triumph of the first order. As our finest historian of the Ottoman world, he knows well that to recreate a past civilization, both author and reader must inhabit it fully in the imagination. With Yashim, we go shopping in the bustling market by the Golden Horn, and then go home to cook up a savory pot of rice mouth-wateringly mixed with currants, pine nuts and Allah knows what else. We make friends with the Byronic ambassador from Poland and a redoubtable drag queen. Along the way, we begin to appreciate the dark and bloody consequences of the collapse of the Janissary Guard in 1826. We learn that much more than perfumed flesh is being made ready within the walls of the harem. We are dazzled by the beauty of a lady who gives Yashim back his manhood. It is difficult to imagine a more generous or more subtle realization of the word mystery than the experience of The Janissary Tree. Michael Alec Rose is a professor of music at Vanderbilt University.

<B>It’s a mystery</B> Noted Greek writer Petros Markaris uses a thoroughly modern and thoroughly corrupt Athens as the backdrop for an international mystery in <B>Deadline in Athens</B>. The novel introduces the overworked and underpaid Athenian homicide inspector Costas Haritos, who wants to do nothing more than quickly close his cases and get his boss and the media off his back. But he can’t abide the unanswered questions in his head. Soon what looks like a simple crime of passion among poverty-stricken Albanian immigrants turns into an international investigation. Well-crafted with a set of memorable characters and satisfying plot twists, <B>Deadline in Athens</B> provides just enough hints to keep you guessing and more than enough suspense to keep you reading. <I>Howard Shirley is a writer in Nashville.</I>

John Rain, a solitary man, lives only with the ghosts of his violent past for company. Cloaked in anonymity, he slips along Tokyo’s modern bustling streets, inconspicuous in a city of 26 million people. This isn’t completely effortless since he is an ainoko, a half-breed, born to a Japanese father and a Caucasian mother. Rain, a martial arts and surveillance expert, is also an assassin. Because Rain’s specialty is ingeniously making his victim’s death appear to be accidental, his services are frequently in demand.

Freelancing in Tokyo, Rain owes allegiance to no one. No longer a mercenary, nor samurai, he creates his own code of conduct and takes great pains to remain a nameless, faceless enigma to his clients. All that is about to change when he is hired to assassinate a Japanese government official.

Rain’s credo is to trust no one and expect the worst. He typically fulfills his contract, pockets his ample fee and vanishes back into the populace. However, this is no ordinary contract. Events spin out of control as Rain finds himself the one being hunted. Reluctant to trust anyone, he enlists the aid of a young protŽgŽ whose illicit skills include computer hacking. Furthermore, since even a solitary warrior must have a love interest, Rain courts a beautiful jazz pianist who has a connection to the murdered government official. Marked for death, Rain and his two companions follow a dangerous trail of clues that lead to treachery and corruption. Rain Fall, Barry Eisler’s debut novel, is a suspenseful thriller filled with double-crosses, duplicity and relentless action. Eisler’s experience of living and working in Japan lends realism to his depiction of the compelling intricacies of Japanese society. He is particularly skilled at describing Tokyo’s smoky jazz clubs, love hotels, stylish whiskey bars and subway and train stations teeming with an endless flow of citizens. And though the world-weary personality of John Rain seems a bit over the top at times, Eisner’s samurai warrior is the kind of superhero who might attract Hollywood’s attention.

C.

L. Ross reads, writes and reviews in Pismo Beach, California.

Nothing so animates the contentious natives of Martha’s Vineyard as the question of proper land use. To propose the slightest alteration of the landscape is to launch an endless series of loud public meetings and a barrage of vitriolic letters to the editor. Imagine the hubbub and intrigue, then, when a local dowager spurns her estranged son and strange granddaughter by selling her 200 unspoiled acres to that lowest of life forms, an off-island developer. Soon after this happens, the lawyer who negotiated the deal turns up dead inside this same disputed acreage.

Thus begins Cynthia Riggs’ second mystery set on Martha’s Vineyard. Determined to make sense of all the commercial and personal crosscurrents set in motion by the sale is 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull, the poet, newspaper columnist and tireless snoop Riggs introduced last year in Deadly Nightshade.

If the lawyer’s death is murder, as Trumbull believes it to be, then there’s no shortage of suspects. Besides the disinherited family members who may be carrying grudges, there are at least four distinct groups scrambling to wrest the newly acquired land from the developer a gaggle of Utopians looking to build their own upscale paradise on the spot, some civic types who seek to turn the place into a public park and campground, a cabal of rich doctors intent on creating an exclusive golf course and the beleaguered and underfunded conservationists who want to preserve the land the way it is.

This last group involves Trumbull in the action (as if she needed an excuse) by asking her to search the warred-over turf for any endangered species of plants that might bring development to a quick halt. Helping Trumbull carry out her mission as well as test her suspicions are the long-suffering local police chief (also a woman) and an inquisitive 11-year-old sidekick.

Riggs, who bases the character of Victoria on her own dauntless mother, knows the Island its flora, fauna, families, legends, customs and rumors so well that every pace she puts her senior sleuth through becomes another delightful discovery.