December Publications

British army captain Monteith Fergusson, stationed in Africa in the service of Queen Victoria, investigates a murder in J.N. Catanach's (The Last Rite of Hugo T.) Lullaby for the Dead, and among the several suspects is Fergusson himself. As he assembles clues, he discovers that the evidence does seem to point toward him, and he wonders if he is the murderer, after all. (Hornbill [www.hornbillpress.com], $12.95 paper 256p ISBN 0-9706407-0-6)

Professor Stuart, a crime historian, is spending a year in Virginia researching a lynching that her grandmother witnessed as a young girl, and ghosts seem to be haunting her dreams and her waking hours in A Dead Man's Honor, the second Lizzie Stuart mystery by criminal justice scholar Frankie Y. Bailey (Death's Favorite Child). Another professor at the university is murdered, the police chief steps up his amorous attentions toward Lizzie, and she endangers herself by becoming involved in an investigation that could uncover police corruption. (Overmountain/Silver Dagger, $23.95 224p ISBN 1-57072-170-X)

Once married to a professional basketball player, Amy Talford brings an insider's look to her first novel, Dying to Meet You, in which groupies surrounding the NBA's newest franchise, the Nashville Jaguars, start to turn up dead. Serial-killer profiler Lori Patrick has to not only solve the crimes but also deal with her attraction to her handsome new partner, Mike Mitchell, and to veteran Jag guard Calvin Ray. (Overmountain/Silver Dagger, $23.95 208p ISBN 1-57072-194-7)

In The Body from Ipanema: A Tony Kozol Mystery, fourth in J.R. Ripley's (Lost in Austin) series, sleuthing guitarist Tony accompanies a Latin pop star at Rio de Janeiro's Carnaval. Tony and his bassist pal Rock are seduced by Brazil's bathing beauties, music and nightlife, but not so much that they won't try to nail a rich and powerful man for murdering a young woman. (Long Wind [www.longwindpub.com], $22.95 244p ISBN 1-892695-08-1)

L.B. Cobb's debut book, Splendor Bay, lands ex-lawyer Bill Glasscocks in the worst day of his life, and the stars of the show are his girlfriend (gone missing), his ex-wife (also missing) and her lover, Governor Wallace Moreno (found dead on the beach in front of Sally's mansion). Bill, the prime suspect, embarks on a whirlwind search for the women in his life, the murderer and proof of his own innocence. (Advance [www.advancebooks.com], $15 paper 244p ISBN 0-9706224-1-4)

Another first book, The Landlord, comes from Ken Merrell, who set out to write a thriller that excludes any sex, profanity and gratuitous violence. Five young girls, all with long, dark hair, are murdered in a small Utah town, and the clock is ticking for the next victim as Officer Rick Stacey investigates a landlord with a deadly secret. (Kay Dee [www.kaydeebooks.com], $21.99 464p ISBN 0-9678510-0-9)

Husband-and-wife writing team Joyce and Jim Lavene (One Last Goodbye) present another episode in the Diamond Springs series, Until Our Last Embrace: A Sharyn Howard Mystery, in which a woman is killed by bears. But when Sheriff Howard finds honey and bear attractant on her clothes and strychnine in her body, evidence first points toward the woman's husband, and then beyond him to his wealthy family. (Avalon [www.avalonbooks.com], $19.95 192p ISBN 0-8034-9508-0)

In Elaine Rounds Budd's Murder at the Follies: An Amy Francis Mystery, Ziegfeld's top showgirl Justine, the "Spirit of the Follies," is murdered in her dressing room just before she's due on stage. With the help of swinging socialite Johnny Griswold, 19-year-old Amy, who shared Justine's dressing room, must clear herself of suspicion and uncover the real killer. (Turtle [30 Beekman Place, New York, N.Y. 10022], $14.95 272p ISBN 0-9633947-5-4)

In a vintage reprint from 1946, Creeping Venom: An Irish Gardening Mystery, Sheila Pim (Common or Garden Crime) lines up worried would-be heirs, witches, cooks and assistants as suspects in the poisoning of a rich old woman. One of the peripheral suspects, Tim Linacre, dons his detective cap to assist Bainsborough's four-man police department in sussing out the murderer. (Rue Morgue [P.O. Box 4119, Boulder, Colo. 80306], $14 paper 155p ISBN 0-915230-42-9)

Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, the vicar's loopy young wife, can't quite keep the details of her husband's job straight, but when his curate is murdered by poison, she turns her scatterbrained sights towards sleuthing in Joan Coggin's Who Killed the Curate?, a vintage reprint set in 1937 and published in 1944. Lady Lupin's comedic capers include promising to help the killer escape if he confesses, and it's anybody's guess whether her winding deductive path will end up at the killer. (Rue Morgue, $14 paper 157p ISBN 0-915230-44-5)

Man Walker, a high school basketball star destined for the NBA and the son of a crack addict, tells his story from beyond the grave in Destin Soul's first book, Who Took the Last Shot? After his mother is killed, Man lives with his opportunistic grandmother, and as he recounts the events leading up to his murder, many of his intimates are implicated in his death. (Seaburn [41-19 31 Ave., Astoria, N.Y. 11103], $13 paper 264p ISBN 1-885778-96-1)

The 1970s alternative news media and the punk rock scene provide the milieu for John Domini's (Highway Trade) Talking Heads '77. Kit Ziddich stirs up trouble with his muck-raking weekly magazine, but he sticks his nose too far into a story, finds himself doing unseemly things in the name of journalism, kills a man in self-defense and uncovers some strange secrets about his Boston Brahmin wife. (Red Hen [www.redhen.org], $17.95 paper 264p ISBN 1-888996-46-3)

In Kent Harrington's (The American Boys) The Tattooed Muse, a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, a writer's group goes haywire when one of its members, a struggling, skateboarding novelist, attempts murder and then commits suicide. His master-of-the-universe best friend Michael, who drives a Porsche and owns a country house, has been lending members of the group money, and they begin to wonder if he's drawing their attention away from some behind-the-scenes activities. (Dennis McMillan [www.dennismcmillan.com], $30 288p ISBN 0-939767-40-6)

Boston homicide detectives Kaplan and Shaw bite off way more than anyone can chew when they begin investigating a murder in Lawrence Kinsman's (A Well-Ordered Life) Birds of Prey: A Sylvie Kaplan Mystery. An international crime ring, hackers extraordinaire, a rash of assassinations, a serial killer's gruesome project and a U.S. Air Force missile guidance system all enter the picture after the murdered woman receives a box of computer disks containing weaponry plans. (Abelard [P.O. Box 242, Manchester, N.H. 03105], $25 330p ISBN 0-9648817-4-8)