Murder in a Heat Wave

Gretchen Sprague. Minotaur Books, $22.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-312-27662-1

Manhattan co-op residents will particularly enjoy Gretchen Sprague's Murder in a Heat Wave: A Martha Patterson Mystery, the third entry in this intelligent series (after 2000's Maquette for Murder). When someone shoots to death the head of the co-op board in her Greenwich Village apartment building after the air-conditioning system breaks down, it's up to retired lawyer Patterson to find the culprit.

Featured Fiction Reviews

Maxim Loskutoff

Loskutoff’s powerful and suspenseful latest (after Come West and See) follows a heartbroken man who makes a fresh start in 1976 Montana, where he becomes neighbors with Ted Continue reading »

Mateo García Elizondo

García Elizondo pays homage to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo in his stunning English-language debut about a heroin addict who arrives in a near-deserted Mexican village to die Continue reading »

Siegfried Kracauer

Translated into English for the first time by Skoggard, this brilliant WWI satire from German cultural critic Kraucauer (1889–1966; From Caligari to Hitler) was originally Continue reading »

Noyes’s bracing debut novel (after the collection Goodnight, Beautiful Women) charts the troubled history of a 19th-century Nordic family descended from a woman who survived a Continue reading »