Desert Spring

In Michael Craft's well-crafted Desert Spring: A Claire Gray Mystery, the third in this lighthearted series after 2003's Desert Winter, 54-year-old Broadway director Claire, now the head of the Desert Arts College theater department in Palm Springs, Calif., has some sleuthing to do when the corpse of a philandering Hollywood producer/playwright turns up in her swimming pool. As usual, the witty repartee will keep readers turning the pages to the surprising conclusion. Agent, Mitchell Waters.