Booklist articles from May 2003

Booklist archives from May 2003

Arledge, Roone. Roone.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 432p. illus. index. HarperCollins, $25.95 (0-06-019733-1). 384.55. Sports hounds and news junkies are the obvious target audience for this posthumously published autobiography, but anyone who has watched television for the last...

Barr, Nevada. Seeking Enlightenment ... Hat by Hat: a Skeptic's Look at Religion.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 240p. Putnam, $21.95 (0-399-15057-9). 813.54. There is something about having survived a serious bout of clinical depression that causes a person to look inward in an effort to find meaning. For popular mystery writer Nevada...

Edwards, Anne. The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 416p. illus. St. Martin's, $27.95 (0-312-28500-0). 973.927. The subtitle is a bit misleading. Portrait suggests either a crisp photograph or an impressionistic painting. This is neither: all the body parts are in the right...

* Feinstein, John. Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 416p. illus. index. Little, Brown, $25.95 (0-316-17003-8). 796.352. It's almost inconceivable that the administrators of a large organization could ever be cast as heroes in the modern world, but that's exactly how best-selling...

Schlosser, Eric. Reefer Madness.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 310p. index. Houghton, $23 (0-618-33466-1). 330. Schlosser is the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation (2001), which was a consciousness-raising examination of the fast-food industry. He now turns his reporting acumen to...

Bushnell, Candace. Trading Up.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 416p. Hyperion, $24.95 (0-7868-6818-X). In Four Blondes (2000), Bushnell introduced readers to Janey Wilcox, a beautiful semi-successful model (and ruthlessly determined social climber) who uses her unappealing but well-connected...

Delinsky, Barbara. Flirting with Pete.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 368p. Scribner, $26 (0-7432-4642-X). Casey Ellis has spent her life longing for the father she never knew. Jenny Clyde has spent hers loathing the father she knew all too well. Casey's father is a noteworthy psychologist named...

Foley, Mick. Tietam Brown.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 288p. Knopf, $23.95 (0-375-41550-5). Telling a story as a memoir can create problems. If the writing is bad, is it the character's fault or the author's? If it's intentionally bad--using cliches like donut sprinkles and...

Higgins, Jack. Bad Company.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 304p. Putnam, $25.95 (0-399-14970-8). Higgins' classic novel of World War II espionage, The Eagle Has Landed (1975), was the thriller that brought him fame--and probably fortune. Bad Company, his thirty-fifth novel, also deals...

Steel, Danielle. Johnny Angel.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 192p. Delacorte, $19.95 (0-385-33549-0). With this brief foray into the world of a family devastated by the death of their teenage son, Steel moves away from the contemporary romance stories she is famous for, although her fans...

The year's best crime novels.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2003... In Mystery Showcases past, our best crime novels of the year have been dominated by one kind of book or another. Historical mysteries won the day a couple of years ago, and before that, literary thrillers took center stage. Similarly, the...

A hard-boiled gazetteer to Chicago. (Mystery Showcase).(Bibliography)
May 1, 2003... What makes Chicago such an evocative setting for crime fiction? Barbara D'Amato, author of two Chicago-set series (see The Booklist Interview, p. 1522), believes the city's history as a rail center helped generate the remarkable ethnic...

Death of a crime writer.(Eugene Izzi)(Obituary)
May 1, 2003... Late on the morning of Saturday, December 7, 1996, a doctor looked out his window while treating a patient and saw a man hanging against the side of a neighboring building. He called 911. Firefighters broke into office #1418 at 6 N. Michigan...

Mystery travel.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2003... Here is a selection of out-of-the ordinary travel guides for the mystery-reading visitor to the Windy City. See also the mystery walking tour described on The Back Page. Clearfield, Dylan. Chicagoland Ghosts. Thunder Bay, paper, $12.95...

The knife that cuts: writing mysteries for young readers.
May 1, 2003... Writing mysteries boils down to one basic question. It's the same question that parents, teachers, and librarians answer all the time. Why? Of course, it's natural for human beings to wonder about the world. The very act of using our powers of...

The Booklist interview: Barbara D'Amato.(Interview)
May 1, 2003... Barbara D'Amato does for Chicago what Edna Buchanan does for Miami. Two of D'Amato's series are primarily set in Chicago. In 12 mysteries, starring, in one clutch of novels, freelance writer Cat Marsala and, in another, patrol cops Suze...

Make Mine a Mystery: a Reader's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Gary Warren Niebuhr. 2003. 548p. appendix, indexes. Libraries Unlimited, $65 (1-56308-784-7). 809. This addition to the Genreflecting Advisory Series is "intended to help readers' advisors, librarians, and others develop a greater...

Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Mike Ashley. 2002.780p. appendixes, bibliog. index. Carroll & Graf, paper, $12.95 (0-7867-1006-3). 813.0872. When faced with the challenge of producing a new encyclopedia on the topic of crime fiction, Ashley chose to include only those...

Whodunit? A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Rosemary Herbert. 2003.215p. Oxford, $35 (0-19-515763-X). 809.3. The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, edited by Rosemary Herbert, appeared in 1999. Now Herbert has drawn on that earlier volume and also updated it by adding...

Click2Flicks: Chicago: the Story behind the Movie.
May 1, 2003... [http://www.click2flicks.com/chicago/chicago_ch1.htm]. Chicago journalism has been a fertile field for enduring fact-to-fiction tales. The Leopold and Loeb case (see below) spawned books and movies. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur drew on...

History & Hauntings.com: Home of Ghosts of the Prairie and the American Ghost Society: the Murder Castle of H. H. Holmes.
May 1, 2003... [http://www.prairieghosts.com/holmes.html]. Erik Larson is getting a lot of attention for The Devil in the White City [BKL F 15 03], his account of the man he calls "the first urban American serial killer." In 1886, Herman W. Mudgett,...

Infoplease.com: All the Knowledge You Need: the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
May 1, 2003... Infoplease.com: All the Knowledge You Need: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/ valmassacre1.html]. about.com: Organized Crime: St. Valentine's Day Massacre. [http://...

Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1934: the Leopold and Loeb Case of 1924.
May 1, 2003... Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1934: The Leopold and Loeb Case of 1924. [http://www.suba.com/~scottn/explore/scrapbks/leo_loeb/leo_loeb.htm]. Leopoldandloeb.com. [http://www.leopoldandloeb.com]. The first, fascinating site...

The Arraignment.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Steve Martini. Read by NickWilliam Dufris. BBC/Sound Library. 2002. 15hr. unabr. 9 cassettes, $79.95 (0-7927-2800-9). 10 CDs, $94.95 (0-7927-2801-7). 800-621-0182. In Martini's newest, attorney Paul Madriani spends months trying to...

Beyond Suspicion.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By James Grippando. Read by L. J. Ganser. Recorded Books. 2002. 10.5hr. unabr. 7 cassettes, $67 (1-4025-2685-7). 800-638-1304. Grippando's latest legal thriller reprises protagonist Jack Swyteck from his first novel, The Pardon (1994). This...

Bleeders.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Bill Pronzini. Read by Gregory Gorton. BBC/Sound Library. 2002. 6.5hr. unabr. 6 cassettes, $54.95 (0-7927-2675-8). 800-621-0182. In this recent title in Pronzini's long-running series, the seamier side of San Francisco's criminal class...

The Cat Who Brought Down the House.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Lillian Jackson Braun. Read by George Ouidall. Recorded Books. 2003.5.5hr. unabr. 4 cassettes, $43 (1-4025-3862-6). 6 CDs, $62 (1-4025-4224-0). 800-638-1304. Familiar characters and voices greet listeners in this twenty-fifth title in...

Red Gold.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Alan Furst. Read by Richard Matthews. Books on Tape. 2002.7.5hr. unabr. 5 cassettes, $40 (0-7366-8925-7). 800-541-5525. Furst's evocative and moody espionage thriller translates splendidly to audio. Versatile narrator Matthews'...

Sins out of School.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Jeanne M. Dams. Read by Kate Reading. Books on Tape. 2002.9hr. unabr. 6 cassettes, $48 (0-7366-8929-X). 7 CDs, $56 (0-7366-8930-3). 800541-5525. Chock-full of tea making, scones, and an expatriate amateur sleuth who is "no longer...

Slow Dollar.(Audiobook Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... By Margaret Maron. Read by C. J. Critt. Recorded Books. 2002.9hr. unabr. 6 cassettes, $85 (1-4025-1821-8). 800-638-1304. Critt's sensitive narration beautifully marries the text and spirit of this ninth entry in the best-selling series...

Top 10 audiobook mysteries.(Directory)
May 1, 2003... Literary crime knows no limits in time or place. From Victorian London to contemporary Florida, evildoers plot, conspire, and commit murder in this exceptional collection of audiobook mysteries from the past year. Absolute Rage. By Robert...

Springer, Nancy. Blood Trail.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 105p. Holiday, $16.95 (0-8234-1723-9). Gr. 6-8. Aaron and Jeremy are neighbors and best friends. After spending the afternoon together, Aaron is murdered, brutally stabbed over and over. Earlier, Aaron confessed to Jeremy that he...

Bailey, Linda. How can a Brilliant Detective Shine in the Dark?(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Bailey, Linda. How Can a Brilliant Detective Shine in the Dark? 2003. 200p. Kids Can, $14.95 (1-55074-896-3); paper, $4.95 (1-55074-750-9). Bailey, Linda, What's a Serious Detective Like Me Doing in Such a Silly Movie? 2003. 192p. Kids...

Chase, Mary. The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Illus. by Peter Sis. Aug. 2003. 128p. Knopf, $15.95 (0-375-82572-X); lib. ed., $17.99 (0-375-92572-4). Gr. 3-6. Nine-year-old Maureen Swanson is "a hard slapper, a shouter, a loud laugher, a liar, a trickster, and a stay-after-schooler."...

Eden, Alexandra. To Oz and Back.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 151p. Allen A. Knoll, $16 (1-888310-22-7). Gr. 5-8. The disappearance of two girls gives Bones Fatzinger, former police officer, an opportunity to show everyone that he still knows how to solve cases. It also might help him pay his...

Hale, Bruce. The Malted Falcon.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 136p. illus. Harcourt, $14 (0-15-216706-4). Gr. 3-5. Two cases! What luck for Emerson Hickey Elementary School's brash, young lizard detective Chet Gecko and his mockingbird partner Natalie Attired. Unfortunately, neither case is a...

Howe, James. Bud Barkin, Private Eye.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Illus, by Brett Helquist. May 2003.96p. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, $9.95 (0-689-85632-6). Gr. 2-4. Although Dachshund and aspiring writer Howie Monroe still hasn't won a Newbony Award, that doesn't stop him from trying to write a mystery....

Leonhardt, Alice. Return of the Gypsy Witch.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 176p. Simon & Schuster/ Aladdin, paper, $4.99 (0-689-85527-3). Gr. 5-7. Sixth-grader Allie lives in the shadow of her brilliant half-sister, Kat, who inherited their father's detective agency when he died. Business is slow until a...

Levy, Elizabeth. The Mystery of the Too Many Elvises.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Illus. by Mordicai Gerstein. July 2003. 64p. Simon & Schuster/Aladdin, paper, $3.99 (0-689-86156-7). Gr. 2-4. In this fourth installment in the Fletcher Mysteries, Fletcher the sleepy basset hound dons an Elvis outfit and nabs a devious...

Roy, Ron. The School Skeleton.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Illus. by John Steven Gurney. 2003.96p. Random, lib. ed., $11.99 (0-375-81368-3); paper, $3.99 (0-375-81368-3). Gr. 2-4. When the skeleton in the school nurse's office disappears, Dink and his friends, Josh and Ruth Rose, try to find the...

Stanley, George E. The Secret of the Green Skin.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Illus. by Salvatore Murdocca. July 2003. 64 p. Simon & Schuster/Aladdin, paper, $3.99 (0-689-85378-5). Gr. 2-4. This new entry in the Third-Grade Detectives series combines a facile mystery and a simple science lesson with some work with...

Top 10 mysteries for youth.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2003... "I love a mystery--any kind of mystery. Like if the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?" That's young reptile detective Chet Gecko talking in Bruce Hale's new pun-filled yarn The Malted Falcon (see review on p....

Wallace, Barbara Brooks. The Perils of Peppermints.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Sept. 2003. 272p. Simon & Schuster, $16.95 (0-689-85044-3). Gr. 3-6. Though it has taken 23 years for the long-awaited sequel to Peppermints in the Parlor (1980) to appear, the story begins only months after the previous book ended. After a...

Adler, David A. Young Cam Jansen and the Zoo Note Mystery.(Book Review)(Children's Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Illus. by Susanna Natti. May 2003.32p. Viking, $13.99 (0-670-03626-9). K-Gr. 2. When Eric loses his permission slip to go on the class field trip to the zoo, his friend Cam Jansen uses her photographic memory to help him find where he left...

Adamson, Isaac. Dreaming Pachinko.(Book Review)(Young Adult Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003.368p. HarperCollins/Perennial, paper, $12.95 (0-06-051623-2). In this fourth Billy Chaka mystery, the intrepid reporter for the teen magazine Youth in Asia (based in Cleveland) is sent once again to Japan. His assignment: locate...

Azzarello, Brian and Risso, Eduardo. The Counterfifth Detective.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Mar. 2003. 144p. illus. DC Comics/Vertigo, paper, $12.95 (1-56389-948-5). 7415. Set in a brutal world of tough guys and glamorous dames, the noir comic-book 100 Bullets revolves around a pulpy but potent premise: enigmatic Agent Graves...

Bailey, Robert Dying Embers.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 272p. Evans; dist. by National Book Network, $21.95 (0-87131-997-7). Scott Lambert is a billionaire industrialist, immersed in his work since his wife died of cancer. But money doesn't buy happiness, and he thinks he might find...

Barre, Richard. Burning Moon.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 343p. Capra, $25.95 (1-59266-011-8). Jimmy Tien and his pregnant girlfriend, Wen, were on a small boat that sank in rough weather off the Southern California coast. Jimmy's father, Vinh Tien, a former North Vietnamese soldier,...

* Blunt, Giles. The Delicate Storm.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 320p. Putnam/Marian Wood, $24.95 (0-399-14865-5). A North Woods or derelict trapper lodges and dangerous bars, where damp and cold pervade everything, forms a convincingly cruel background for a mystery in which one body is set...

Barron, Stephanie. Jane and the Ghosts of Netley.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 294p. Bantam, $23.95 (0-553-80222-4). The seventh entry in Barron's Jane Austen series revolves around intrigue, treachery, and murder. Jane is summoned in secret by her old friend Lord Harold Trowbridge, who asks her to watch...

* Bowen, Peter. Badlands.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 272p. St. Martin's/Minotaur, $23.95 (0-312-26252-3). The residents in and around rural Toussaint, Montana, are a contentious group, but when the sun sets, they are all related by their shared reverence for the land and the...

Berry, Linda. Death and the Icebox.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003.248p. Five Star, $25.95 (0-7862-5233-2), Young widow Trudy Roundtree is back in Ogeechee, Georgia, where she grew up, working as a police officer for her cousin, Police Chief Henry Huckabee. Just after returning from homicide...

Billingham, Mark. Scaredy Cat.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 384p. Morrow, $23.95 (0-06-621300-2). "Red herring" doesn't do justice to the device this taut tale of twinned serial killers employs so deliciously. Obviously having a great time, Billingham releases a small school of herring to...

Birmingham Noir.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Ed. by Joel Lane and Steve Bishop. May 2003. 320p. Tindal Street; dist. by Dufour, paper, $14.95 (0-9535895-9-5). For fans of gritty British crime drama, here's a collection of 23 stories set in and around Birmingham. Like the Los Angeles...

* Box, C. J. Winterkill.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003.400p. Putnam, $23.95 (0-399-15045-5). Box makes it a resounding three for three with this worthy successor to last year's celebrated Savage Run, which followed his acclaimed debut, Open Season (2001). The story begins with another...

Blake, Michelle. The Book of Light.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 224p. Putnam, $24.95 (0-399-15046-3). In her third adventure, Lily Connor, Episcopalian priest and amateur sleuth, tries to discover whether an ancient scroll, called The Book of Light, really contains the secret words of Jesus...

Blauner, Peter. The Last Good Day.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003.432p. Little, Brown, $24.95 (0-316-09873-6). The Schulmans, a big-city family recently transplanted to smaller, comfier Riverside, New York, find that life in the suburbs ain't all it's cracked up to be: a body appears in the river...

Block, Valerie. None of Your Business.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 352p. Ballantine, $23.95 (0-345-46184-3). Block follows up her comic romance Was It Something I Said? (1998)with an unusual and hilarious take on the police procedural. Two partners in the NYPD's Computer Crimes Squad are working...

The Book of Spies: an Anthology of Literary Espionage.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Ed. by Alan Furst. May 2003. 352p. Modern Library, $24.95 (0-679-6425 1-X). Furst, one of our best modern espionage writers (Kingdom of Shadows), brings together selections from the work of some of the genre's founders and a few of its...

Bourdain, Anthony. The Bobby Gold Stories.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 176p. Bloomsbury, $19.95 (1-58234-233-4). Premed coke dealer Bobby Gold got caught, did 10 years, and came out big, muscled, and mean. Now he's head of security at a mobbed-up nightclub, moonlighting as a bone-breaking goon. He's...

Boyle, Alistair. The Unholy Ghost.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 271p. Allen A. Knoll, $23 (1-888310-67-7). By day he's Malvin Stark, the nerdy connoisseur of 100-year-old cycads, but by night he's Gil Yates, a big-money private investigator with a knack for getting himself into very odd...

Burdett, John. Bangkok 8.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 318p. Knopf, $24.95 (1-4000-4044-2). Bangkok cop Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the only honest officer in his district, yet he reveres his gangster police colonel. He stays out of the city's sex trade but indulges in meth. He's the son...

* Brett, Simon. Murder in the Museum.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Aug. 2003.352p. Berkley Prime Crime, $22.95 (0-425-19043-9). The kitchen garden of a stately home in the Sussex village of Fethering is the final resting place for two bodies: one buried there during World War I and newly discovered; the...

* Brayne, Alan. Jakarta Shadows.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 256p. Tindal Street; dist. by Dufour, paper, $14.95 (0-9535895-8-7). Readers will have a tough time believing this is the author's first novel: something this good doesn't just spring out of nowhere. Graham Young, an Englishman...

Burke, Alafair. Judgment Calls.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 352p. Holt, $23 (0-8050-7386-8). This first novel by a former Portland, Oregon, district attorney (and daughter of award-winning crime writer James Lee Burke) introduces D.A. Samantha Kincaid, a sympathetic protagonist and...

Camilleri, Andrea. The Snack Thief.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Tr. by Stephen Sartarelli. May 2003.297p. Viking, $21.95 (0-670-03223-9). In the third Inspector Montalbano mystery to appear in the U.S., the maverick Sicilian cop is once again convinced that the fix is in and determined to unfix it....

Carter, Charlotte. Jackson Park.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Aug. 2003. 224p. Ballantine, paper, $12.95 (0-345-44782-4). It is just one week after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., and the black community on Chicago's South Side continues to grieve. For 20-year-old Cassandra Lisle, abandoned as...

* Garcia-Roza, Luiz Alfredo. December Heat.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Tr. by Benjamin Moser. June 2003. 288p. Holt, $23 (0-8050-6890-2). Last year, this best-selling Brazilian novelist dazzled U.S. crime-fiction fans with The Silence of the Rain [BKL My 1 02], the first installment of a trilogy. This, the...

Chang, Leonard. Underkill.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 336p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $24.95 (0-312-30843-4). The only bad thing about the latest entry in the Allen Choice series is its lame title. Past that, it's a treat, with a protagonist who really grows on you. It's...

Chazin, Suzanne. Fireplay.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 336p. Putnam, $25.95 (0-399-15053-6). Fire Marshal and single mother Georgia Skeehan returns in her third mystery-adventure about New York's bravest. When two firefighters are killed in a deliberately set restaurant blaze,...

Clark, Mary Higgins. The Second Time Around.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 320p. Simon & Schuster, $26 (0-7432-0606-1). Financial columnist Marcia "Carley" DeCarlo finds herself squarely in the middle of a bizarre story about the mysterious disappearance of Nick Spencer, founder of the medical research...

Collins, Max Allan and others. Oasis: on the Road to Perdition, v.1.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... 2003. 96p. illus. DC Comics/Paradox, paper, $7.95 (1-4012-0068-0). 741.5. The hit movie The Road to Perdition was adapted from a 1998 graphic novel by Collins, author of the Nate Heller mysteries, who now reprises Road's characters in...

Cook, Judith. Dead Ringer.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... July 2003. 256p. Severn, $26.99 (0-7278-5955-2). Former investigative journalist Cook explores the drug problem in Britain, the plight of the commercial fisherman, and the environmental impact of depleted uranium shells while also offering...

* Gault, William Campbell. Marksman and Other Stories.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Ed. by Bill Pronzini. May 2003. 207p. Crippen & Landru, $29 (1-885941-92-7); paper, $19 (1-885941-93-5). Gault was a prolific professional who, between 1936 and 1995, published scores of novels and hundreds of short stories. Although he...

Craig, Philip R. A Vineyard Killing.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 240p. Scribner, $24 (0-7432-0524-3). J. W., Zee, and their children live year-round on Martha's Vineyard, and J. W. always seems to be finding trouble. The retired Cop prefers fishing and his kids to his old life, but when Paul...

Crow, Michael. The Bite.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 368p. Viking, $23.95 (0-670-03222-0). Baltimore County cop Luther Ewing, a former Special Forces operative, figures that chasing the country bumpkins who traffic methamphetamine in the county's rural areas shouldn't involve much...

Curzon, Clare. Body of a Woman.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 240p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-28821-2). This one's not for the squeamish. The novel opens with the brutal murder of Leila Knightly, an unhappily married mother of two stepchildren. Who did it, of...

de Castrique, Mark. Dangerous Undertaking.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 232p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-055-9). Morticians are hot, both in print and on screen. First there was Tim Cockey's offbeat crime series starring Baltimore mortician Hitchcock Sewell, and then there was the hit HBO series...

* Geary, Joseph, Spiral.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 368p. Pantheon, $24.95 (0-375-42223-4). Nick Greer just finished five years writing the definitive biography of volatile painter Frank Spira. In his obsession with his subject, he has blown deadlines, crippled his relationship...

Dezenhall, Eric. Jackie Disaster.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 416p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $24.95 (0-312-30769-1). Dezenhall's second novel shows the author growing as a storyteller. His debut, Money Wanders [BKL F 1 02], was funny and perceptive, but his latest effort, again...

DuBois, Brendan. Betrayed.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 304p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $24.95 (0-312-31018-8). Three decades after his B-52 was shot down near Hanoi, Jason Harper's older brother, Roy, appears at Jason's door, bringing bucketloads of trouble. First, there...

Eidson, Bill. The Repo.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 312p. Justin, Charles & Co./Kate's Mystery Books; dist. by National Book Network, $24.95 (1-932112-11-1). When Julie and Paul Baylor disappear aboard their boat, the Fresh Air, Sarah Ballard, who earns her living repossessing...

Evans, Mary Anna. Artifacts.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... May 2003. 290p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-056-7). Faye Longchamp is an archaeology student trying to hang on to her ancestral home on North Florida's Gulf Coast. When the property taxes on the dilapidated mansion--inherited from her...

Fine, David. The Executioner's Art.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... June 2003. 206p. Tindal Street; dist. by Dufour, paper, $14.95 (0-9535895-1-6). Sheffield, England. 1998. Two policemen find the grisly remains of a dead man in an abandoned warehouse. At least they think it's a man. It's difficult to tell...