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.

If ever the adage "things aren’t always what they seem" applied to a novel, it would be to The Lake of Dead Languages. In her debut novel, Carol Goodman spins a tale that keeps the reader guessing on multiple fronts. The novel begins in the present day, when protagonist Jane Hudson returns to her alma mater, the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks, to teach Latin. Newly divorced, Jane seems to have fled to Heart Lake to take refuge and re-evaluate her life. But the reader quickly discovers she has a past to reconcile when a page from her teenage journal reappears after more than two decades . . . and one of her students tries to kill herself.

Part two of the novel flashes back to Jane’s teenage years. Here the reader has a chance to get to know the younger Jane, a lonely girl who lives on the other side of the river ("in Corinth, it’s the river and not the train tracks that divide the haves from the have-nots"). Her mother encourages her to take Latin for the sole purpose of meeting, and hopefully befriending, the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers. And it is in Latin class that Jane is befriended by siblings Matt and Lucy Toller two of the three teenagers who later commit suicide during Jane’s senior year at Heart Lake School.

The reader looks on as Jane steps through the veil of young adulthood when she loses her virginity and faces the death of a parent. But the trials of growing up are further complicated as the circumstances of the trio of tragic deaths are slowly unraveled. The reader begins to wonder if the student deaths were really suicide and comes to realize that Jane may be the only one who can answer that question.

While avid mystery readers may find they can figure out "whodunit" before the final page of most novels, The Lake of Dead Languages holds its secrets to the end. If it weren’t for Goodman’s keen ability to weave a mystery of multiple layers, each revealed with exquisite timing, her picturesque prose would be reason enough to keep the reader turning the pages.

Amy Rauch Neilson is a writer and editor in Belleville, Michigan.

In Polar, Deputy Ray Tatum has two mysteries to solve: the disappearance of Angela Dunn, a wordless child who wanders into the woods, never to be seen again by her parents, and the sudden prophetic powers of the formerly worthless Clayton, a shiftless town institution best known for his preference for the porn channel. One mystery will be solved, while the other remains tantalizingly out of reach.

But these strong narrative engines are not what really drives Polar, T. R. Pearson’s latest novel. What Pearson seeks to do, instead, is capture the feel of small town life and the myriad personalities that give it texture, without resorting to the usual platitudes that pretend such towns have more than their share of unspoiled innocence. In other words, Pearson’s small-town Virginia is no Mayberry. Nor is it inhabited by the Cleavers.

The novelist thinks nothing of interrupting the flow of his narrative to give the life story of a minor character who may never appear in the book again. This doesn’t constitute an aesthetic flaw. After all, the true, unvarnished motivations of man are what Polar is really all about.

It’s about characters like Ivy Vaughn, a woman who remains in such a high dudgeon she never pays attention to the road and leaves a trail of dead animals in her wake. It’s also about Mrs. Dunn, who turns the loss of her daughter and husband into profit, launching a career as a radio celebrity whose collective losses make her an authority on flagging American morals.

And, of course, there is Clayton, whose television satellite is arced over his garage at an angle that betrays, for all to observe, his addiction to televised erotica. Clayton seems an unlikely candidate to be blessed with the gift of second sight. But fate, which has a definite sense of humor in a T.R. Pearson novel, chooses Clayton to become a small-time, small-town prophet.

Only Deputy Tatum is able to turn Clayton’s obscure prognostications to good purpose in his search for Angela. Motivated by the haunting memory of his own dead child, Ray pursues Angela’s story long after the media, the FBI and even the girl’s parents have given her up for lost. Using the prism of Tatum’s grief, Pearson critiques small-town pretensions and, by extension, America’s chronic hypocrisies.

Whenever a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes) hits the stands, it is cause for celebration among critics and readers alike. It took the better part of a year for his latest novel, The Feast of the Goat, to be released in translation, and the many English-speaking fans of this Spanish-language master (this reviewer included) have been champing at the bit in anticipation. As the novel opens, we find that Urania Cabral has made quite a good life for herself. She lives in an expensive Manhattan high-rise and serves as a corporate lawyer for the World Bank. At 49, she is one of the major power brokers of the New York financial community. Her success has not been without its shortcomings, however: she has been estranged from her family for some time and has no significant other with whom to mark the passing of the years.

She decides on a whim to return to her childhood home of Santo Domingo, capital of the Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic. Her homecoming will be something of a self-imposed test, an experiment to see whether the city can still stir up the feelings of nostalgia, rage, bitterness and impotence she felt when she left. It will also offer her the opportunity to visit her ailing father, a high-ranking government official who fell out of favor in the aftermath of the murder of dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961. (Trujillo’s government, though arbitrary and bloody, had been propped up by the U.S. government, largely because of his vehement anti-communist stance.)

Jump ahead a chapter, and you find yourself transported back to 1961. Trujillo is at the height of his power, and he rules the country with the proverbial iron fist. He routinely beds the wives of his generals and confidants and publicly brags about it in front of them, a modern-day Caligula in a tropical suit. Slowly the notion of assassination takes hold in the hearts and minds of a small group of patriots.

Deftly cutting back and forth from the assassination plot to the present day, Llosa weaves the story of a family and a country torn apart by the abuse of power. The Feast of the Goat succeeds on many levels. Llosa’s writing is, as always, rich and earthy, complex and elegant. The story is a classic, marking the downfall of a despot and the unforeseen consequences for his inner circle, his enemies and his country.

It is always a pleasure to pick up a new mystery and find out: a) that the book is written in the first person, and b) that it’s situated in Los Angeles, where all good murder mysteries should be set. The Wicked and the Dead by BookPage columnist Robert Weibezahl finds struggling screenwriter Billy Winnetka embroiled in an inquiry into the death of a prominent cinema producer. As the story unfolds, it turns out that several of the major players in a controversial religious movie have met accidental deaths in recent months, and Billy takes it upon himself to do a bit of discreet investigation. The suspects abound: a nutball zealot religious leader (or one of his flock); the body-building gay lover of one of the major characters; the unpleasant (and quite possibly corrupt) cop. Weibezahl worked in film production for a number of years and it shows in his writing; he offers his readers a vivid insider’s look at the Hollywood machine. Winnetka is an engaging sort, a competent screenwriter wryly disillusioned by the lack of respect accorded to his profession. We look forward to reading his further adventures.

The Wicked and the Dead is Weibezahl’s first novel, but it is not his first foray into the genre: he has been an Agatha and Macavity Award finalist for his role as editor of A Taste of Murder and A Second Helping of Murder.

In a Baltimore suburb built on dreams of success, three girls play out a variation of Benjamin Franklin’s adage, an epigraph to this engaging psychological thriller: three can keep a secret, if two are dead. As To the Power of Three opens, an unidentified high-school senior forgoes fashion in favor of a more practical method of carrying a gun. An hour later, in a locked bathroom, one girl is dead, one is critically injured and one is lying. What appears at first to be the truth behind this horrific tragedy masks what really happened in the bathroom, and among the three girls who have been friends for 10 years: Kat, sweet and smart, the daughter of a man who’s living his thwarted dreams through his only child. Perri, an aspiring actress who decides to expose the truth about her lifelong friend. Josie, the athlete, who came to the trio late and never feels certain of her position in the friendship triangle. Laura Lippman is a Baltimore resident and former journalist whose previous books, including her Tess Monaghan series, have won every major mystery award. Her experience as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun provided valuable insight into the lives of policemen, criminals and victims. In To the Power of Three, she tells the story of every community’s nightmare. But how much of the story is true? Through the eyes of several narrators students, teachers, parents and Baltimore County police sergeant Harold Lenhardt readers see pieces of the puzzle, including snapshots of the girls’ developing friendship from their third-grade meeting through its implosion. But like Sgt. Lenhardt, who appeared in Lippman’s thought-provoking Every Secret Thing, readers must wait for the final clue a glimpse of a young woman’s anger to see the full picture. Lippman knows what Baltimore County looks like. She knows what matters to its teenagers, and how insider kids torture the outsiders. And just as Lippman knows the importance of the right shoes, especially to the girl who can’t afford hundred-dollar sandals, she clearly also remembers how it feels to walk in them. To the Power of Three lets readers walk that same treacherous path. Leslie Budewitz lives in Montana and is a legal consultant for writers.