Booklist articles from May 2005

Booklist archives from May 2005

Colson, Charles and Fickett, Harold. The Good Life: Seeking Purpose, Meaning, and Truth in Your Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Colson, Charles and Fickett, Harold. The Good Life: Seeking Purpose, Meaning, and Truth in Your Life. June 2005. 394p. Tyndale, $24.99 (0-8423-7749-2). 261 With the aid of the excellent parable-writer/exegete Harold Fickett (see...

O'Connor, Gary. Universal Father: A Life of John Paul II.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... O'Connor, Gary. Universal Father: A Life of John Paul II. May 2005. 448p. index. Bloomsbury, $24.95 (1-59691-096-8). 282. Slated to be published on the late pope's eighty-fifth birthday, May 18, 2005, O'Connor's biography shows signs of...

Spurlock, Morgan. Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Spurlock, Morgan. Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. May 2005. 354p. index. Putnam, $21.95 (0-399-15260-1). 641.5. Spurlock, whose film documentary Super Size Me, earned an Oscar nomination and substantial media...

Harrison, Kathryn. Envy.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Harrison, Kathryn. Envy. July 2005. 301p. Random, $24.95 (1-4000-6346-9). Harrison is a high-wire memoirist and a probing and inventive novelist. Her sixth novel, an intoxicating work of psychosexual suspense, portrays a New York family...

Koontz, Dean. Velocity.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Koontz, Dean. Velocity. May 2005. 401p. Bantam, $27 (0-553-80415-4). Billy Wiles tends bar in a tavern in his small California hometown, from which he has never moved despite the horrific night when he became an orphan at 14 and its...

Lindsey, Johanna. Marriage Most Scandalous.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Lindsey, Johanna. Marriage Most Scandalous. June 2005. 326p. Pocket, $25 (1-4165-0545-8). Margaret Landor spent months searching Europe for Sebastian Townshend, who disappeared from England 11 years ago after accidentally killing his best...

Wiesel, Elie. The Time of the Uprooted.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Wiesel, Elie. The Time of the Uprooted. Aug. 2005. 320p. Knopf, $25 (1-4000-4172-4). Throughout his long and active career, this well-regarded writer has explored, in novel and memoir form, the contemporary Jewish consciousness forged in...

Cunningham, Michael. Specimen Days.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Cunningham, Michael. Specimen gays. June 2005. 288p. Farrar, $24 (0-374-29962-5). In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours (1998), Cunningham boldly improvised on Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. Here Walt Whitman is his...

Editor's note.
May 1, 2005... High-demand mysteries, which would normally appear in Upfront, are reviewed in this issue in our special Mystery Showcase. See, in particular, reviews of new novels by Edna Buchanan (p. 1516), James Lee Burke and Lee Child (p. 1517), C. J. Box...

The year's best crime novels.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2005... Frankly, we thought it would be a long while before another 12-month period saw the publication of a stronger set of first crime novels than appeared between April 2003 and May 2004. How do you top Erin Hart's Haunted Ground and Rupert Holmes'...

A hard-boiled gazetteer to the Northwest.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2005... At first blush, the Northwest seems an unlikely setting for hard-boiled crime fiction. It's too beautiful to evoke much in the way of peril, and even though its cities can boast their own mean streets, they don't have the tradition of meanness...

Mystery travel.(Bibliography)
May 1, 2005... Here is a selection of out-of-the-ordinary travel guides for the mystery-reading visitor to the Northwest. Best Places: Northwest. 14th ed. Ed. by Giselle Smith. Sasquatch, paper, $19.95 (1-57061-356-1). This entry, focused on...

Pulp faction: making a case for hard case crime.(Interview)(Biography)
May 1, 2005... In 1995 Charles Ardai founded a company called Juno with the bold idea of giving away e-mail accounts for free. He took the company public in 1999, rode the Internet bubble until it burst, then merged Juno with another company in 2001 and...

Leave the blood at the door: adult mystery writers try children's books.
May 1, 2005... When crime-novelist Peter Abrahams, the author of more than a dozen books for adults, mostly thrillers, announced his intention to write a children's book, an acquaintance asked, "What made you think you were ready to play on the big field?"...

Altman, Steven-Elliot and others. The Irregulars: ... in the Service of Sherlock Holmes.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Altman, Steven-Elliot and others. The Irregulars:... in the Service of Sherlock Holmes. 2005. 128p. illus. Dark Horse, paper, 812.95 (1-59307-303-8). 741.5. Sherlock Holmes pastiches flourish in literature, theater, radio, cinema, and, as...

Anscombe, Roderick. The Interview Room.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Anscombe, Roderick. The Interview Room. June 2005. 320p. St. Martin's, $24.95 10-312-32399-9). Anscombe's latest is a riveting, nuanced psychological thriller. Forensic psychiatrist Paul Lucas is called in to ascertain if Craig, a young,...

Barclay, Linwood. Bad Guys.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Barclay, Linwood. Bad Guys. May 2005. 320p. Bantam, $22 (0-553-80386-7). After discovering that the suburbs aren't as safe as they're cracked up to be (Bad Move, 2004), Zack Walker, his wife, and their teenage children move back to the...

Baxter, Holly. Tears of the Dragon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Baxter, Holly. Tears of the Dragon. June 2005. 314p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-146-6). Depression-era Chicago is the setting for this appealing debut series by Paula Gosling, writing as Holly Baxter. Elodie Browne, a junior employee at...

Bowker, David. How to Be Bad.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Bowker, David. How to Be Bad. June 2005. 256p. St. Martin's/Griffin, paper, $12.95 (0-312-32826-5). This amusing satire answers the question: What would happen if an oversensitive lad-lit protagonist were forced to deal with violent freaks...

Arvin, Reed. Blood of Angels.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Arvin, Reed. Blood of Angels. July 2005. 320p. HarperCollins, $16.95 (0-06-059634-1). Nashville prosecutor Tom Dennehy is legendary for convicting two unrelated men of the same crime. Wilson Owens just received a lethal injection for a...

Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics. Ed. by Tim McLoughlin. June 2005. 300p. Akashic, paper, $15.95 (1-888451-76-9). Brooklyn Noir (2004) featured originals, but here, McLoughlin mines reprints, allowing him to pay tribute to "all the great...

Buchanan, Edna. Shadows.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Buchanan, Edna. Shadows. June 2005. 272p. Simon & Schuster, $24 (0-7432-5055-9). Buchanan returns to the Miami specialized police unit she premiered in last year's Cold Case Squad. She returns also to the cop humor and interjected war...

Buffa, D. W. Trial By Fire.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Buffa, D. W. Trial By Fire. May 2005. 304p. Putnam, $24.95 (0-399-15281-4). Attorney Joseph Antonelli becomes fast friends with a young law professor, Justin Sinclair, when the two appear as talking heads during a high-profile murder...

Burdett, John. Bangkok Tattoo.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Burdett, John. Bangkok Tattoo. May 2005. 320p. Knopf, $24 (1-4000-4045-0). You've read a few Italian mysteries, and you think you know what moral ambiguity is all about. Time for a trip to District 8 in the heart of Bangkok's sex district,...

Burke, Alafair, Close Case.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Burke, Alafair, Close Case. July 2005. 336p. Holt, $21 (0-8050-7784-7). Usually, district attorneys and cops play well together; they're both on the same team, after all, trying to rid the streets of crime. But something's gone awry in...

Carroll, J. R. Blindside.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Carroll, J. R. Blindside. June 2005. 420p. Allen & Unwin, paper, $11.95 (1-74114-206-7). Eleven years after Shaun McCreadie went to jail for his role in a robbery that turned deadly, he's out. And now the former police detective has a list...

Blunt, Giles. Black Fly Season.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Blunt, Giles. Black Fly Season. June 2005. 352p. Putnam/Marian Wood, $25.95 (0-399-15255-5). Blunt sets his highly acclaimed Cardinal and Delorme series in Canada's remote Algonquin Bay, which is far from civilization (the closest city,...

Casey, Donis A. The Old Buzzard Had It Coming.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Casey, Donis A. The Old Buzzard Had It Coming. July 2005. 226p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-149-0). This debut novel is a remarkably tactile historical mystery. It's set in Oklahoma farm country in 1912. Harley Day, a generally disliked...

Child, Lee. One Shot.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Child, Lee. One Shot. June 2005. 376p. Delacorte, $25 (0-385-33668-3). Jack Reacher has been doing his best to live off the grid, but his past as a military policeman keeps coming back to bite him. This time the biter is a former Gulf War...

Connolly, John. The Black Angel.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Connolly, John. The Black Angel. June 2005. 480p. Atria, $25 (0-7434-8786-9). In the fifth Charlie Parker novel, the private investigator, recently remarried (after the murders of his wife and child), has been trying to pull his life back...

Conwell, Kent. Vicksburg.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Conwell, Kent. Vicksburg. June 2005. 192p. Avalon, $21.95 (0-8034-9718-0). When PI Tony Boudreaux's good friend Jack asks to be driven to his father's funeral in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Tony would love to say no; after all, it was Jack's...

Cook, Marshall. Murder at Midnight.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Cook, Marshall. Murder at Midnight. June 2005. 240p. Bleak House, paper, $14.95 (1-932557-06-7). Mitchell, Wisconsin, community newspaper editor Monona "Mo" Quinn once again becomes involved in a murder investigation when her priest,...

Cotterill, Colin. Thirty-Three Teeth.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Cotterill, Colin. Thirty-Three Teeth. Aug. 2005. 272p. Soho, $24.95 (1-56947-388-9). Less than two years after the Communist rise to power in Laos, the nervous government is sending the royal family into secret exile, banning festivals...

Burke, James Lee. Crusader's Cross.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Burke, James Lee. Crusader's Cross. July 2005. 336p. Simon & Schuster, $25.95 (0-7432-7719-8). "The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in Louisiana without doing business with the devil probably knows...

Ask questions later.(HE READS ... Mysteries)(Never Street)(Blind Man with a Pistol)(Hot Springs)(Point of Impact)(Solomon's Vineyard)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Chandler said, "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid," but sometimes a little meanness helps. Take it from Mike Hammer: "If you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you...

Cousins, Caroline. Marsh Madness.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Cousins, Caroline. Marsh Madness. June 2005. 208p. John F. Blair, $22.95 (0-89587-315-X); paper, $16.95 (0-89587-309-5). Three cousins, Lindsey, Margaret Ann ("Mam"), and Bonnie, solve a murder on the fictional island of Indigo, South...

Crow, Michael. No Way Back.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Crow, Michael. No Way Back. June 2005. 304p. HarperCollins, $25.95 (0-06-072583-4). Luther Ewing's ethnicity--half Vietnamese, half black--isolates him. Groups won't accept him until he proves himself, as he did in the Gulf War and...

Daniel, John M. The Poet's Funeral.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Daniel, John M. The Poet's Funeral. May 2005. 250p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-144-X). The annual trade show of the American Booksellers Association draws a colorful crowd--bookpeople who work the convention floor by day and attend...

Davis, Kyra. Sex, Murder and a Double Latte.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Davis, Kyra. Sex, Murder and a Double Latte. May 2005. 304p. Harlequin/Red Dress Ink, $17.95 (0-373-89519-4). San Francisco settings enliven this high-spirited first mystery. Sophie Katz, a biracial, half-Jewish mystery writer, has just...

Disher, Garry. Kittyhawk Down.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Disher, Garry. Kittyhawk Down. July 2005. 288p. Soho, $23 (1-56947-394-4). Procedural fans looking for something a little different will devour this one. It's the second Detective Inspector Hal Challis mystery (originally published in the...

Don't call her "honey".(SHE READS ... Mysteries)(Morgue Mama: The Cross Kisses Back)(Dead Witch Walking)(What's a Girl Gotta Do?)(No Human Involved)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Mysteries were my favorite escape reading during those crucial biblio-formative years. I gobbled up any story featuring a girl detective who was plucky, sassy, and resourceful. Judy Bolton, Harriet Welsch, the Dana Girls--I wanted to be them...

This cowboy has issues.(Story behind the Story: C.J. Box's Out of Range)(Interview)
May 1, 2005... He wears a cowboy hat in his author photos, looking a little bit like Garth Brooks. He lives outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. He has guns on the wall of his writing room. His series hero, Joe Pickett, is a game warden. But C. J. Box is no redneck...

Box, C. J. Out of Range.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Box, C. J. Out of Range. May 2005. 320p. Putnam, $24.95 (0-399-15291-1). When a fellow game warden kills himself, Joe Pickett is transferred to Jackson Hole--"Wyoming's very own California"--where the new and old Wests collide head-on....

Douglas, Carole Nelson. Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Douglas, Carole Nelson. Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit. May 2005. 384p. Forge, $24.95 (0-765-31399-5). Noted for its delightfully tongue-in-cheek briskness, the indefatigable Midnight Louie series never seems to run out of steam. When Las Vegas...

Emerson, Earl. The Smoke Room.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Emerson, Earl. The Smoke Room. May 2005. 320p. Ballantine, $24.95 (0-345-46290-4). By the time ill-starred firefighter Jason Gum trains his hose on scantily clad vamp Iola Pederson--he's trying to wash off the remains of the meteoric pig...

Etchells, Olive. No Corners for the Devil.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Etchells, Olive. No Corners for the Devil. June 2005. 272p. Carroll & Graf, $25 (0-7867-1565-0). The Baxter family, newcomers to a farming community on the Roseland Peninsula of Cornwall, is settling in well. The neighbors have welcomed...

Fowler, Christopher. The Water Room.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Fowler, Christopher. The Water Room. June 2005. 356p. Bantam, $24 (0-553-80389-1). Britain's Fowler seems to be one of those multitalented types who can write anything and do it well. He has written edgy thrillers, wildly imaginative...

Fowler, Earlene. Delectable Mountains.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Fowler, Earlene. Delectable Mountains. May 2005. 320p. Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95 (0-425-20249-6). In San Celina, California, Benni Harper is curator of the local folk art museum, and her husband, Gabe Ortiz, is chief of police. There's a...

Fuentes, Leonardo Padua. Adios Hemingway.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Fuentes, Leonardo Padua. Adios Hemingway. Tr. by John King. May 2005. 240p. Canongate, $20 (1-84195-642-2). Mario Conde is a retired Havana cop obsessed with Hemingway, so when the skeletal remains of a man killed on Papa's Cuban estate 40...

Gordon, Nadia. Murder Alfresco.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Gordon, Nadia. Murder Alfresco. June 2005. 268p. Chronicle, $23.95 (0-8118-4630-X). On her way home from a late-night party, chef Sunny McCoskey sees a corpse hanging from a tree at one of Napa Valleys premier wineries. Since she may have...

Burton, Milton T. The Rogues' Game.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Burton, Milton T. The Rogues' Game. July 2005. 304p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-33681-0). The stranger who comes to town in this gripping country noir set in post-WWII Texas is also the story's narrator. He arrives...

Hammett, Dashiell. Lost stories: 21 Long-Lost Stories by the Creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Hammett, Dashiell. Lost stories: 21 Long-Lost Stories by the Creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man. Sept. 2005. 352p. Vince Emery; dist. by IPG, $24.95 (0-9725898-1-3). At first glance, this seems like another...

Greenwood, Kerry. Ruddy Gore.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Greenwood, Kerry. Ruddy Gore. June 2005. 216p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (1-59058-118-0). St. Kilda, Australia, in the 1920s is a fascinating place, and none of its citizens better embody its freewheeling spirit than the debonair and delightful...

Harper, Tom. The Mosaic of Shadows.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Harper, Tom. The Mosaic of Shadows. June 2005. 304p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-33867-8). The title's shadowy mosaic is an apt metaphor for the myriad puzzle pieces Demetrios Askiates must fit together to capture a...

Harrison, Mike. All Shook Up.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Harrison, Mike. All Shook Up. May 2005. 240p. ECW, paper, $15.95 (1-55022-688-6). Ex-cop Eddie Dancer is a private investigator in Calgary, Alberta. When a man approaches him claiming to be a bank robber and asks Eddie to track down his...

Holms, Joyce. Hidden Depths.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Holms, Joyce. Hidden Depths. May 2005. 288p. Allison & Busby; dist. by IPM, $25.95 (0-7490-8317-4). Barrister Tam Buchanan is enjoying a round of golf when once again his annoying friend Fizz Fitzpatrick draws him into a mystery. Fizz's...

Hunsicker, Harry. Still River.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Hunsicker, Harry. Still River. May 2005. 304p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-33787-6). In a Dallas so desolate, hot, and gritty it's a wonder anyone chooses to live there, low-rent, highly skilled PI Lee Henry Oswald...

Kaminsky, Stuart M. Denial.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Kaminsky, Stuart M. Denial. June 2005. 288p. Forge, $23.95 (0-765-31165-8). Lew Fonesca, former investigator for Illinois' Cook County State's Attorney's Office, is serving a self-imposed life sentence in Florida. Over the past three...

Huston, Charlie. Six Bad Things.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Huston, Charlie. Six Bad Things. July 2005. 320p. Ballantine, $21.95 (0-345-46479-6). After 2004's exhilarating Caught Stealing--in which a regular schmo emerges from a bloody war between bad NYPD cops and Russian mobsters with $4.5...

Kandel, Susan. Not a Girl Detective.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Kandel, Susan. Not a Girl Detective. June 2005. 304p. Morrow, $23.95 (0-06-058107-7). In this fluffy follow-up to last year's I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason, CeCe Caruso, writer, vintage-clothes collector, and Nancy Drew fan, manages to...

Keating, H. R. F. A Detective at Death's Door.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Keating, H. R. F. A Detective at Death's Door. May 2005. 256p. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-34206-3). British mystery maven Keating, whose series characters include a Bombay police inspector and a British woman sleuth known as...

Kenner, Julie. The Givenchy Code.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Kenner, Julie. The Givenchy Code. June 2005. 368p. Pocket/Downtown, paper, $12 (0-7434-9613-2). Everyone has weaknesses. Graduate-student Melanie "Mel" Prescott's happen to be haute couture shoes and complex codes, and who knew one would...

Kent, Bill. Street Fighter.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Kent, Bill. Street Fighter. May 2005. 304p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-32883-4). Kent teams up two Philly newspaper reporters in his Street series, a rumpled obituary writer and the author of a consumer column, with...

Kerley, Jack. The Death Collectors.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Kerley, Jack. The Death Collectors. July 2005. 336p. Dutton, $24.95 (0-525-94877-5). Marsden Hexcamp was murdered in a courtroom 30 years ago by one of his devoted acolytes. It wasn't considered a tragedy. Hexcamp, who would surely have...

Lange, Kelly. Graveyard Shift.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Lange, Kelly. Graveyard Shift. May 2005. 362p. Mysterious, $24.95 (0-89296-757-9). In her latest Maxi Poole adventure, Lange takes readers back to glitzy, shallow, fabulous La-La Land--with glamorous TV news reporter Maxi as our guide....

Lawrence, David. Nothing like the Night.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Lawrence, David. Nothing like the Night. June 2005. 320p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/ Thomas Dunne, $24.95 (0-312-32880-1). Janis, one of the beautiful people, is anything but after lying about her flat for eight days with 50 assorted knife...

Jenkins, Emyl. Stealing with Style.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * Jenkins, Emyl. Stealing with Style. June 2005. 336p. Algonquin, $22.95 (1-56512-445-6). Jenkins, a well-known antiques appraiser, puts her knowledge to excellent use in this elegant little mystery. Not surprisingly, the heroine is also...

Lippman, Laura. To the Power of Three.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Lippman, Laura. To the Power of Three. June 2005. 448p. Morrow, $24.95 (0-06-050672-5). Lippman has won just about every mystery award out there: the Anthony, Edgar, Shamus, Agatha, and Nero. Her latest, a stand-alone mystery, is somewhat...

Littell, Robert. Legends.(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Littell, Robert. Legends. May 2005. 400p. Overlook, $25.95 (1-58567-696-9). Get this: rumpled Brooklyn PI Martin Odum is not sure who he really is, having lived so long and so convincingly under the assumed identities--legends--in his work...

Lovesey, Peter. The Circle.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Lovesey, Peter. The Circle. June 2005. 368p. Soho, $24 (1-56947-392-7). In The House Sitter(2003), Inspector Diamond teamed up with Inspector Henrietta Mallin to solve a murder. Now it's Mallin who gets an assist from Diamond. A publisher...

Macdonald, Marianne. Three Monkeys.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Macdonald, Marianne. Three Monkeys. June 2005. 224p. Severn, $27.95 (0-7278-6218-9). Antiquarian book dealer and amateur sleuth Dido Hoare returns in another spirited adventure. A homeless man discovers the torso and arm from a woman's...

Maron, Margaret. Rituals of the Season.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Maron, Margaret. Rituals of the Season. Aug. 2005. 320p. Mysterious, $23.95 (0-89296-809-5). Maron's Judge Deborah Knott series is one of those cozy-procedural combos whose fans relish being part of the daily lives of the characters. This...

McInerny, Ralph. Blood Ties.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... McInerny, Ralph. Blood Ties. July 2005. 320p. St. Martin's/Minotaur, $24.95 (0-312-33690-X). Father Dowling, the parish priest who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time solving crimes, returns in this intricate tale of murder and...

Crime in the comics.(READ-alikes: Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's The Hell Stick and Two Bodies, Two Minds)
May 1, 2005... A relative rarity now, crime comic books were once a mainstay of the industry. In fact, even before the advent of the comic book in the 1930s, cops chased crooks on the newspaper funny pages. Most notable of them was Dick Tracy, whose...

Niles, Steve and Jones, Kelley. Last Train to Deadsville.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Niles, Steve and Jones, Kelley. Last Train to Deadsville. May 2005. 144p. illus. Dark Horse, paper, $14.95 (1-59307-107-8). 741.5. Cal McDonald, star of a graphic-novel series by Niles, is a detective who takes only cases involving demons,...

Koike, Kazuo and Kojima, Goseki. The Hell Stick.(The Hell Stick)(Two Bodies, Two Minds)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Koike, Kazuo and Kojima, Goseki. The Hell Stick. Tr. by Dana Lewis. 2005. 320p. illus. Dark Horse Manga, paper, $9.95 (1-59307-209-0). 741.5. Koike, Kazuo and Kojima, Goseki. Two Bodies, Two Minds. Tr. by Dana Lewis and Mark Miyake. 2004....

King, Laurie R. Locked Rooms.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... * King, Laurie R. Locked Rooms. June 2005. 400p. Bantam, $24 (0-553-80197-X). King makes full use of her considerable skills at probing the dark of the human psyche in this utterly mesmerizing tale of Mary Russell's trip back to the San...

Minichino, Camille. The Nitrogen Murder.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Minichino, Camille. The Nitrogen Murder. May 2005. 256p. St. Martin's/Minotaur/ Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-33383-8). Why is Minichino's Gloria Lamerino series unique? It's elementary--in the sense that each adventure revolves around an...

Modiano, Patrick. Missing Person.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Modiano, Patrick. Missing Person. Tr. by Daniel Weissbort. May 2005. 176p. Godine/ Verba Mundi, paper, $16.95 (1-56792-281-3). Twenty-seven years after its original French publication won the Prix Goncourt, this elliptical, engrossing...

Muller, Marcia. Cape Perdido.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Muller, Marcia. Cape Perdido. July 2005. 305p. Mysterious, $24.95 (0-89296-006-X). Like Cyanide Wells (2003), this stand-alone mystery from the creator of the popular Sharon McCone series draws much of its appeal from its rustic, beautiful...

Nicholson, Deborah. Sins of the Mother.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Nicholson, Deborah. Sins of the Mother. June 2005. 256p. Severn, $27.95 (0-7278-6219-7). Canadian theater manager Kate Carpenter is back in another cracking good mystery. She has finally allowed her boyfriend, Cam, to move in with her--a...

O'Brien, Charles. Lethal Beauty.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... O'Brien, Charles. Lethal Beauty. June 2005. 256p. Severn, $28.95 (0-7278-6184-0). At an exhibit opening in Paris in 1787, noted artist Bouchard unveils his latest painting. He and his audience are shocked to see it has been badly defaced,...

Page, Katherine Hall. The Body in the Snowdrift.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Page, Katherine Hall. The Body in the Snowdrift. May 2005. 256p. Morrow, $23.96 (0-06-052530-4). Caterer Faith gears up for her father-in-law's seventieth birthday celebration at a ski resort in Vermont that the Fairchilds have been...

Pavia, Peter. Dutch Uncle.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2005... Pavia, Peter. Dutch Uncle. July 2005. 258p. Dorchester/Hard Case, paper, $6.99 (0-8439-5360-8). This crime chuckler wears its Elmore Leonard influence on its cover: "Dutch" is Leonard's nickname. The Dutch uncle in the book is an actual...