Journalist Stewart Dubinsky, a character who’s appeared in several of Scott Turow’s legal thrillers, wants to write a book. Instead, he finds a story he’d never imagined.

When his father, David Dubin, dies, Stewart discovers a packet of David’s wartime letters to his fiancŽe with a note referring to his court-martial. Stewart had always known his father served as an Army lawyer in World War II, meeting his mother in a concentration camp, but the fiancŽe and the court-martial weren’t part of that story. As Stewart investigates, he discovers that the lives his parents claimed to have lived were far less dramatic, and far less heroic, than the truth.

Still a working lawyer, Turow is known for intelligent, gripping thrillers that lead readers into the shadowy corners of life. In Ordinary Heroes, he dives into a different world: an Army lawyer’s search for a truant OSS officer during the darkest days of the war in Europe, and a son’s search for the truth about his parents.

David Dubin’s former lawyer, now an elderly retired judge, gives Stewart his father’s written account of his journey from loyal lieutenant to infantry captain to accused man. David is assigned to investigate and arrest Maj. Robert Martin, who pulled off a series of raids that helped turn the Allies’ luck. But Martin’s clash with authority brands him as insubordinate and worse. David participates in a raid with Martin’s crew including an intriguing Polish girl, Gita. Following Martin’s trail with his intrepid sergeant, David parachutes into ever-changing territory, then leads a weary band of survivors in the Battle of the Bulge. Still uncertain whether he’s chasing a traitor or a hero, David pursues Martin into Germany, to the camp where he once again meets Gita.

A masterful, passionate storyteller who handles his latest literary challenge with assurance, Turow pays homage in Ordinary Heroes to all who ever dared pursue love or justice amid the horrors of war. Leslie Budewitz practices law and writes in northwest Montana.

For more than a generation, British author John Le CarrŽ has written spy novels that both define and transcend the genre. His latest book, Absolute Friends, is his best work in years, another impassioned portrayal of the forces that drive global politics. Ted Mundy is a thistledown of a man, blown wherever fate and his own whims take him. His resume is endless: ex-’60s radical, failed writer, businessman, schoolteacher, spy. It is this last role that comes back to haunt him with the reappearance of his old friend and fellow traveler, Sasha, who offers financial security and a chance to fight the good fight once again. A mysterious benefactor wants to finance a school that will counter what he sees as propaganda supporting the war in Iraq. Mundy eventually realizes, however, that some things can look too good to be true. Absolute Friends is an absolute page-turner, yet in some ways, plot is superfluous to this novel. We are drawn into the plot because we care about the characters, from the simply drawn minor actors to the meticulously assembled protagonist. Absolute Friends is as much an examination of the human soul as it is an intriguing commentary on 21st century conflicts.

Colin Harrison, author of Afterburn and Manhattan Nocturne, is at it again in this provocative story about one man’s despair and his desire to maintain normalcy. The Havana Room, a delicious mystery that will keep you guessing, is perhaps Harrison’s most intriguing book yet.

The narrator is Bill Wyeth, a clever New York real estate attorney who finds his life upended after accidentally killing his son’s friend in a freak peanut oil accident. Wyeth’s life disintegrates before his eyes when he loses his job, his family and his sanity. Thrown into a pit of despair, Wyeth claws his way through Manhattan’s darkness, hoping for happiness but finding nothing. That is, until he visits an antique steak house managed by an emotionally complex young woman named Allison Sparks. Day after day, he soaks in his misery, eating at table 17 and idolizing the woman he knows nothing about. But that changes when he finds himself in the notorious Havana Room, a section of the restaurant known for its history and secrecy. Sparks asks Wyeth to provide late-night legal advice to her friend, business Jay Rainey. Stuck in a cruel world of what-ifs and social ironies, Wyeth reluctantly helps out. But before he knows what hit him, Wyeth is knee-deep in Rainey’s checkered past. Dodging Chilean businessmen and gun-toting goons, Wyeth removes himself from the situation before it costs him his life. The Havana Room is an obsessively detailed, tantalizing account of a man’s devotion to his family and his eagerness to both find, and hide, the truth. Harrison’s talent at creating quirky, well-structured characters is matched by his ability to interweave them into a plot riddled with fantastic twists and literary U-turns. All in all, The Havana Room is a gripping story about redemption and devotion that will have you rooting for the lonely underdog. Nicholas Addison Thomas is a writer in Fairfax, Virginia.

Dashiell Hammett started it when he featured Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. Television gave us Hart to Hart and Remington Steele, with their mixed-sex detective teams. Now Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, and his wife, Linda Kenney, an attorney specializing in civil rights and criminal law, have created their own duo: Dr. Jake Rosen, a New York City medical examiner, and Philomena Manny Manfreda, a crusading attorney for the downtrodden.

Working on the theory that opposites attract, Baden and Kenney throw together Manny, an organized, fashion-conscious neatnik, and Jake, a disorganized slob who wouldn’t know an Armani from a pepperoni, in Remains Silent. When several corpses are discovered during the excavation of a shopping mall in upstate New York, Jake’s mentor, retired medical examiner Pete Harrigan, asks his former protŽgŽ to help him identify the bodies. Jake has recently humiliated Manny in court, but love starts to bloom when he tells the daughter of one of the deceased to hire Manny to find out if someone who worked at the creepy, shuttered state mental hospital that was home to the dead man several decades before should be held liable for the death. Manny and Jake may start off at odds with each other, but you know they’ll end up together when they bond during a gruesome and graphic autopsy.

The questions concerning the old corpses take on a different complexion when people involved in discovering the cause of death are murdered and Manny and Jake are attacked. Influential locals will loose a lot of money if plans to build the mall are delayed. And what did happen in the mental hospital all those years ago? Baden and Kenney dish up hairbreadth escapes, plenty of suspects, fascinating forensic details and a good old-fashioned romance. On the downside, Manny and Jake never seem quite real and the plot gets a bit farfetched toward the end, but if you’re headed to the beach or have a long plane ride ahead of you, Remains Silent will make a good companion. Phillip Margolin, the author of 11 bestsellers, including Lost Lake, his latest, lives in Portland, Oregon, where he was a criminal defense attorney for 25 years.

Joel Ross’ page-turner of a debut novel, Double Cross Blind, opens in the early months of World War II, when the British intelligence services identified almost all of the Nazi agents operating in the United Kingdom and gave them the option of being executed or becoming double agents. Enough chose the latter that the British were able to deceive the Nazis in ways that significantly enhanced Allied military operations.

Into this world in which nothing is what it seems, Ross inserts several Americans. The protagonist, Tom Wall, has volunteered to serve with the Canadian Army and has been physically and psychologically traumatized by his experiences during the battle for Crete. At the center of that trauma is his belief that his brother, Earl, who is in the American diplomatic service, is a Nazi double agent who caused the death of most of Tom’s squadron on Crete. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Tom had been romantically involved with Harriet, Earl’s eventual wife, before Earl entered the picture. Add in a couple of eccentric Nazis, the unreal chaos of the Nazi Blitz against London and other British cities, and advance intelligence about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the novel becomes a compellingly disorienting mix for the reader as well as for Tom Wall.

Double Cross Blind does exhibit some of the limitations of a first effort. The characters aren’t always quite as interesting as Ross seems to think they are, and the very gradual revelation of what is actually occurring may cause some readers to give up on the story prematurely. Still, Ross (whose editor is former Putnam bigwig Phyllis Grann, who groomed Patricia Cornwell and Robin Cook for bestsellerdom) is very good with detail and with choosing descriptive language that often seems perfectly suited to the person, place or situation and is unusually perceptive without being self-indulgently flamboyant. Even the murkiest events are imbued with a vivid immediacy. And that in itself is more than enough to carry the story. Martin Kich teaches English at Wright State University.

The new CBS hit show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and the multitude of novels featuring intrepid medical examiners are evidence of our fascination with forensics. Scientific sleuths are big business, and Karin Slaughter’s Dr. Sara Linton should feel right at home in this popular crew. The star of Slaughter’s debut suspense thriller Blindsighted, Linton brings the expertise of a trained scientist to her job as pediatrician and part-time coroner in the small town of Grant County, Georgia.

Slaughter starts the story off with a bang as the peaceful town is the scene of the horrific slaughter and rape of a blind college professor from a nearby agricultural college. The horror grows as it becomes clear that this small Georgia town is now the stalking grounds for a particularly vicious serial rapist/murderer.

The twists and turns of the mystery will hold readers’ attention, but Slaughter also creates a captivating world with other characters from Sara’s town and family. Sara is not just a crime-solver, but a sister, a daughter and an ex-wife. All of those relationships play a part in her life, particularly the thorny broken love with her ex-husband, who just happens to be the town’s chief of police.

Jeffrey Tolliver, her wayward ex-husband, wants to change that but isn’t quite sure how. Over the course of the novel, Sara fights against the man who wounded her deeply, but it’s clear to the other characters in the novel and to the reader if not to Sara that she still loves Jeffrey as much as he loves her. As Sara and Jeffrey dance around their past and search for a psychopath, they are being hunted as well.

A story that roars its way through the final pages, Slaughter’s thriller is scary, shocking and perfectly suspenseful. Already earning comparisons to Patricia Cornwell, Slaughter’s Blindsighted is a first novel that doesn’t read like one and will propel the Georgia native right onto the must read list for suspense fans. And since her publisher was wise enough to sign her to a three-book deal, more Sara Linton adventures are in store for readers who discover this talented new author.

William Marden is a freelance writer in Orange Park, Florida.

Best known for the hilarious Southern romp Handling Sin (just released in paperback), author Michael Malone has shown a unique ability to question what he calls the moral, political and social dimensions of the old South versus the new, while at the same time telling entertaining and well-crafted stories. After an absence of more than 10 years, Malone returns to the popular detective duo of Uncivil Seasons (1983) and Time’s Witness (1989). In First Lady, he has created another irresistible blend of mystery, romance, heartache and revenge in an appealing Southern setting. Hillston, North Carolina, home of Haver University, has been praised by both the governor and the press as being one of the safest small towns in the state. Hillston’s reputation and the reputations of the local police chief, Cuddy R. Mangum, and his best friend and chief of homicide, Lt. Justin Savile V, are called into question when a second nude female body is found mutilated in the woods outside of town. The killer leaves a body tag on each victim addressed to Justin and Cuddy, making the case a personal challenge. The mayor and the local press, attracted by the sensational nature of the murder, seem intent on impeding the progress of the case. The fact that the deputies in the local sheriff’s department act like the Keystone Kops at crime scenes doesn’t help matters. The sheriff’s office is also the cause of another headache for Cuddy. The only son of one of the town’s best families was arrested for shooting his pregnant wife on New Year’s, and the sheriff’s department tainted the evidence so badly that a not guilty verdict is inevitable. In desperation and frustration over the mounting bad press, Cuddy announces that he and his department will find the serial killer the press has dubbed Guess Who in a week or resign.

As with his previous detective novels, Malone has again created a cleverly constructed plot along with imperfect, nuanced characters. Justin, who drinks a bit too much, loves old things and considers the homogenization of his hometown a travesty, while Cuddy has been, and will always be, in love with the one woman he can’t have. Their banter is believable, smart and funny, filled with references to Colonel Sanders and other things uniquely Southern. Michael Malone’s return to this intrepid pair of detectives and their colorful small town life will delight armchair detectives everywhere. His characters, their relationships and the fictional town of Hillston charm long after the final page.

Pam Kingsbury lives and writes from her hometown of Florence, Alabama.