Kermit Roosevelt’s gripping first novel, In the Shadow of the Law, is entertaining and provocative, but caveat emptor it is not so much a conventional legal thriller as it is a passionate examination of the way the law works in America. It is also a compelling portrait of the men and women who practice law. Two cases set the stage for the novel. First, a married couple is found murdered in Virginia. After receiving an anonymous tip, police arrest Wayne Lee Harper, who promptly confesses. At trial, Harper is sentenced to death. With only weeks remaining before his execution, Harper now desperately needs pro bono representation for a final appeal. Second, there is a catastrophic explosion at Hubble Chemical in Texas. Dozens of workers are killed. Now, Hubble needs representation in a class-action lawsuit that threatens to destroy the company.

Several lawyers from the powerful D.C. firm Morgan Siler step up to meet the challenges of the two cases. Mark Clayton is fresh out of law school and questioning his career choice when he is thrust over his head into the Harper case. In the meantime, brilliant associate Walker Eliot keeps busy maintaining the pretense of working on the Harper case while doing as little as possible. In another Morgan Siler office, the incredibly successful litigator Harold Fineman leads the Hubble defense team, although he finds himself dangerously distracted by Katja Phillips, the attractive idealist assigned to assist him. Fineman and Phillips must also contend with Ryan Grady, a confused associate who is more concerned with women than with the law. A law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Supreme Court law clerk, Roosevelt is a great-great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. In the Shadow of the Law is clear and convincing evidence that he is also a powerful storyteller who knows how to craft an intricately plotted page-turner filled with intriguing characters. Tim Davis teaches literature at the University of West Florida in Pensacola.

Every professor learns the hard way that scholarship does not prepare the scholar for classroom teaching. David Nolta’s first novel hinges on an equally reliable proposition: scholarship, no matter how brilliant, does not make the scholar well-equipped for love or marriage. The murder of beautiful Virginia Vanderlyn, wife of one of Clare College’s most distinguished professors, is a brutal instance of the sorry state of affairs in the academy. Despite the high concentration of brain matter on one small campus, no one (or so it would seem) least of all Virginia’s archaeologist husband knows that she is dead and buried under the floorboards of the Vanderlyn mansion until 10 years after the deed is done. These various proofs of idiocy do not, however, add up to a typical satire on academic life. The subtitle of Grave Circle, “An Ivory Tower Mystery,” invites the reader to think of the book as a murder mystery; but at the same time “Ivory Tower” promises a comedy of manners, a promise fulfilled by the author’s affectionately tongue-in-cheek portrait of New England college life.

There is nothing satirical about the novel’s heroine, either, apart from her outlandish name. Nolta presents a vivid portrait of the inscrutable Antigone Musing, professor of chemistry, as she sits musing (no other word for it) on the arrival of her brother Hiawatha. Nolta almost immediately undercuts the pomposity of these names with the more manageable nicknames Hi and Tig. Such good-natured abbreviations fairly sum up the delightful psychology of the novel: everything falsely inflated gets the stuffing knocked out of it, including both the inevitable love story and the unexpected family romance that unfold. Making their amateur investigations of Virginia Vanderlyn’s murder, Hi and Tig form a fascinating, if ineffectual, duo of novice detectives. And as the mystery nears its suspenseful climax, Grave Circle summons the strange and satisfying feeling that something much more is afoot here than the “game.” To try to name that feeling would be academic. Michael Alec Rose is an associate professor at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music.

Since concluding his acclaimed Berlin Noir trilogy, author Philip Kerr has explored speculative fiction, mystery, science fiction and even the young adult genre. He returns to WWII-era Europe with Hilter’s Peace, an intense and masterfully duplicitous story that revolves around the Big Three Conference involving Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in Teheran in 1943. After losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the debacle at Stalingrad and being overwhelmed all along the eastern front, Hitler and his Nazi brain trust know that Germany cannot possibly win the war. Secret peace negotiations have begun, but as FDR says with understatement, It’s a delicate situation. Things become even more complicated when war atrocities committed by the Soviet Union come to light, specifically a mass grave containing the bodies of 4,000 Polish officers and a letter describing the nightmarish deaths of more than 50,000 German POWs. Two focal characters in the unfolding drama are Willard Mayer, a Harvard-educated philosopher with more than a few skeletons in his closet, and Walter Schellenberg, a general in Hitler’s SS serving as the head of Foreign Intelligence. Mayer, who is working for the Office of Strategic Services as a German intelligence analyst, is inexplicably called upon by FDR to accompany him to Teheran. But as the meeting draws nearer, so does the chance that his past political indiscretions will be uncovered. Schellenberg, meanwhile, has found out about the top-secret meeting and is planning to end the war once and for all.

Masterfully blending fiction and fact and replete with espionage, intrigue and clandestine military adventure Hitler’s Peace will not only appeal to WWII aficionados but also to fans of suspense novelists like Clancy, Ludlum and DeMille. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

hrillers are funny things; like most genre fiction, they tend to be formulaic, but conversely they are most successful when they break the rules. Irish writer John Connolly does a good job of “writing outside the box” in his new novel, Dark Hollow, a Stephen King-meets-Robert B. Parker tale of murder, mobsters and the macabre.

Charlie “Bird” Parker, introduced in Connolly’s first novel, Every Dead Thing, is an ex-Boston cop turned private detective with a frightening gift or maybe it’s a curse. He sees dead people. Not all the time, mind you, but he sees plenty this time around, and they want vengeance. When Parker rousts the ex-husband of a friend for child support payments, he inadvertently sets off a chain of events that leaves a trail of bodies leading to an isolated Maine village called Dark Hollow and to an unsolved mystery in his family’s past. Parker is not the only one on the trail, and any or all of the others could be the killer.

John Connolly has populated Bird Parker’s world with an assortment of memorable characters, from a creepy pair of professional killers to their counterpoint, a gay hit-man and his lover, who happen to be Parker’s friends and allies in this adventure. Add to the mix a rogue mob boss, a bitter sheriff, a beautiful psychologist, a brutish felon and a desperate cop searching for his missing daughter, and you’ve got quite a cast. Even though Connolly sets his novel in Boston and northern Maine, his writing betrays his Irish roots. He writes dense, thoughtful prose, a brooding style that is rich in detail and introspection. Parker’s ghostly vision on a subway, a battle in an abandoned warehouse and a deadly chase down a snow-covered road are particularly well drawn scenes.

Dark Hollow is Connolly’s second novel, and with this fast-paced, original thriller, he demonstrates the talent that could make him a formidable contributor to the genre.

James Neal Webb does copyright research for Vanderbilt University.

eath by misadventure: that’s the coroner’s verdict in the death of Ann Butts, found dying in a London gutter on a rain-soaked night in the winter of 1978. Case closed. Or is it? “Mad Annie,” as she is known to her neighbors, is an unpopular, antisocial person, who drinks, mutters to herself and lives alone with a menagerie of stray cats. She is cruelly ridiculed by her neighbors for her strange behavior. She is also the only black person living in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Ranelagh, our narrator, finds Annie dying in front of her house and for a brief but powerful moment, they make eye contact. The problem is, no one but Mrs. Ranelagh believes that Annie was murdered, and she pays a heavy price for her conviction. At great personal cost, she makes it her mission and eventually her obsession to prove that Annie’s death was not accidental. She becomes depressed, agoraphobic and loses her job. While the Ranelagh family eventually leaves England, Mrs. Ranelagh does not leave her obsession behind.

The Shape of Snakes, a powerful tale of justice and redemption, is actually two stories: Annie’s and Mrs. Ranelagh’s. The author deftly explores not only what type of person would kill Annie, but what type of person would spend 20 years searching for justice. There are no superheroes or over-the-top villains in The Shape of Snakes, just a fascinating cast of deeply flawed, complicated and, at times, downright grim characters. They reveal their sordid lies and sad secrets through sizzling conversations that practically scorch the pages with their intensity.

Writing in the first person, Walters skillfully intersperses her story with personal letters, correspondence, documents, medical records and e-mail. It’s a smooth and ingenious way to introduce characters, unravel clues and span a 20-year time period. It’s also a bit like following a trail of tantalizing crumbs through the forest. Can Mrs. Ranelagh break through the wall of silence and complicity in her search for justice? With an endless list of suspects, The Shape of Snakes is an intriguing mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.

C. L. Ross, a life-long mystery lover, reads, writes and reviews in Pismo Beach, California.

hat if you dreamed of becoming a writer, slaved for months over a novel, only to discover that it’s your law school roommate who has crafted a fantastic debut story? His book is a perfect page-turner with one catch: it’s about you and your life experiences. What do you do? Probably nothing. It’s a free country and he stole your thoughts fair and square. Anyone foolish enough to broadcast their life experiences to the world probably deserves to have them stolen anyway, right? OK, suppose the roommate dies in a bike accident before he can publish the book. Would you put your name on it and pretend it’s yours? In About the Author, Cal Cunningham does exactly that, earning $2 million in publishing and motion picture advances as the autobiography shoots to the top of the bestseller lists. But as compelling as that plot line is, it only gets you through the first 38 pages of this richly textured novel. Before you know what has happened, you are transported from a touchy-feely, literary introspective to a first-rate thriller, as Cal realizes that someone knows about his secret.

In his first novel, author John Colapinto, who has a nonfiction book and numerous magazine articles to his credit, has created a world with characters so interesting that when you finish the book, you want them to return. Desperate to hang on to his success, Cal meets with drug dealers, generation-X lesbians, psychotic killers and New England villagers who seem to have been bused in from another century.

A thinking person’s thriller, About the Authorcontains plenty of action, but it is complemented by superb character development and an impeccable sense of dramatic timing. Colapinto never hits the reader in the face with moral issues, but they are inescapable. We’re helplessly drawn into Cal’s first person adventures as he tries to save the life that was never really his. A thriller with knowing psychological insights, About the Author looks at the deeper issues of identity and the meaning of success. I don’t know if Colapinto is the best new novelist to debut this year, but if he isn’t, he is pretty darned close.

James L. Dickerson’s most recent books are Colonel Tom Parker and Faith Hill: Piece of My Heart, both published this year.

Suspense, history, literary fiction, espionage, romance and psychological drama Secret Father, the compelling new novel by acclaimed writer James Carroll, is all of this and more.

Told by father and son, the story is set in Germany during the summer of 1961. The Cold War between East and West is escalating, and construction will soon begin on the Berlin Wall. During this tense time, Ulrich, Michael and Katharine leave their American high school in West Germany and travel, without telling their parents, to the Communist side of Berlin for the May Day celebration. Their escapade springs from youthful rebellion but quickly brings serious consequences. Shadowed by his unknown birth father’s past, Ulrich has taken a flight bag belonging to his stepfather, a U.S. intelligence officer. The bag what it contains, who will view its secrets and what will happen to Ulrich for possessing it is at the crux of the story.

The teenagers are detained by the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police. Paul, Michael’s widower father, and Charlotte, Ulrich’s beautiful German-born mother, must attempt to rescue them before their actions cause an international incident that could destroy them and the world’s tenuous peace.

Secret Father, Carroll’s first novel in nine years, is being published this month on the 42nd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. The author of Constantine’s Sword, which examined the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust, and An American Requiem, a National Book Award-winning memoir, Carroll himself spent time in Germany in the 1960s as the son of a U.S. general. In fact, Carroll and two friends took a trip to East Germany, but their experiences were less harrowing than those of the fictional characters in the novel.

Gripping and beautifully written, Secret Father is a remarkable evocation of a tumultuous era and of the power that secrets can hold across generations.

Cindy Kershner is a writer in Nashville.

Greg Rucka, author of the popular Atticus Kodiak mystery series as well as dozens of comic books and graphic novels, has released his first stand-alone novel, a suspense thriller entitled A Fistful of Rain that exposes the unsightly underbelly of the rock and roll industry. Miriam “Mim” Bracca is the lead guitarist for Tailhook, one of the hottest bands in the world. When they started their world tour almost a year earlier, the trio was just another rock band from Portland. Now Mim and her bandmates are media superstars. Their single is shooting up the charts like a bullet, and the band is on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Mim has it all fame, fortune and the adoration of millions of fans. But in a matter of hours, Mim’s world is turned upside down. She is kicked off the tour, and temporarily out of the band, for her excessive drinking. When she returns to her home in Portland, she is abducted at gunpoint and thrown into the back of a truck only to be returned an hour later untouched. When the police do nothing about the abduction, she calls her brother Mikel for support. He informs her that their abusive alcoholic father, who was imprisoned more than a decade ago for killing their mother, is out of prison and looking to reconcile. When nude photos of her surface on the Internet, she thinks things can’t possibly get any worse but they do.

Besides the compelling cast of deeply flawed characters and the masterfully constructed plot lines which kept me trying to figure out who was trying to blackmail Mim until the last few pages the melancholy, almost poetic narrative gives the story an extra level of illumination. The symbolism behind the phrase “a fistful of rain,” which comes from a Warren Zevon song of the same name, is used brilliantly throughout the novel as a metaphor for Mim’s life. And very much like a Zevon tune, Rucka’s novel is instantly addictive, hypnotically descriptive, witty, irreverent, disturbing and always entertaining. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer living in Syracuse, New York.

Thrillers often explore espionage and intrigue from the inside, but Janette Turner Hospital’s new novel Due Preparations for the Plague plunges the reader into the shadowy world of terrorism and intelligence from an outsider’s perspective. The result is a mesmerizing tale of grief, mystery and revelation.

Due Preparations opens as Lowell, a house painter, tries to cope with the approaching anniversary of his mother’s death in a skyjacking. As the date nears, the reader sympathizes with Lowell’s grief and anxiety. Already troubled by anger and guilt, Lowell is further shaken by unwanted phone calls from Samantha, who was among a group of children released from the doomed flight. Now a member of a support group for survivors of the incident, she pesters Lowell for any information he might have. Lowell’s troubles expand when his estranged father, a former intelligence agent, is killed in a traffic accident. Information he leaves his son sets Lowell and Samantha on the path to learning more about the tragedy that marked both their lives. An intense, riveting reading experience follows that explores the overlapping worlds of national security and international terrorism.

As civilians and proxies for the reader Lowell and Samantha have a tinge of the sinister about them. But Hospital skillfully imparts in them the idealism that drives many to enter the nation’s intelligence services, as well as the isolation and loneliness that are the toll of a lifetime in clandestine activity.

Gregory Harris is a writer and editor living in Indianapolis.

For Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin, Monday, the 15th of May in the year 1876 is a good day to die. The fashionably dressed young swag, inheritor of an immense fortune, strolls through the lush thoroughfares of Moscow’s Alexander Gardens, requests a kiss from a total stranger and, being rejected, pulls a small revolver from his pocket and dispatches himself before a crowd of horrified onlookers.

The event is written off by the police as an open-and-shut case: a bored young aristocrat played a game of roulette and lost. However, Xavier Grushin, detective superintendent of the Moscow Police, decides to use the event as a training exercise for his new clerk Erast Fandorin. Unwilling to dismiss the case as a mere suicide, Fandorin pursues leads ignored by his superiors and finds himself embroiled in intrigues of global proportions. The Winter Queen is the first of Russian author Boris Akunin’s novels to be translated into English. All nine Erast Fandorin books have been bestsellers in Russia, where the series’ popularity is described as Erastomania. Combining canny intuition, keen observation and dumb luck, Fandorin resembles a 19th century Russian amalgam of Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Samurai Jack.

Akunin writes in a charming, lyrical style that moves the story along briskly. American readers will find The Winter Queen deliciously nostalgic, distinctly Russian and surprisingly cosmopolitan in its appeal. Mike Parker is a writer in Nashville.