July Publications
Agatha and Macavity Award—winner Jill Churchill brings murder and mayhem to the suburbs once again (and adds a 13th punny title to the popular series she began with Grime and Punishment) in her good-natured cozy The House of Seven Mables: A Jane Jeffrey Mystery. With parenting demanding less of their time, best pals Jane Jeffrey and Shelley Nowack agree to decorate a house that's being renovated by a bevy of feminist laborers, but when the contractor winds up in the basement with a broken neck, the plucky duo must determine if the crime was personally or professionally motivated—not to mention stay out of harm's way themselves. (Morrow, $23.95 240p ISBN 0-380-97736-2)
Meg Daniels has good reason to be grumpy: she and PI beau Andy Beck were supposed to be vacationing in Antigua, but thanks to Andy's manipulative bombshell of an ex, he's signed on to investigate the death of her sugar daddy husband. Andy becomes a suspect; Meg looks for ways to clear him; the bombshell's got tricks up her sleeve; and the dead man possesses a secret past (not to mention a long list of aliases) in Jane Kelly's Wrong Beach Island, a Jersey Shore mystery that's boosted by short chapters and a clipping pace, but marred somewhat by Meg's frequent gristly New York attitude. (Plexus [www.plexuspublishing.com], $22.95 328p ISBN 0-937548-47-2)
A violent bar incident leads to a "deep, corrosive" affection in Charlotte Carter's evocative, syntactically inventive urban noir of sexual adventure and dysfunction. The author of the Nanette Hayes jazz mysteries turns her attention to the darker side of life and love as she investigates how a black woman could come to love the troubled white man whose face she cut after he insulted her, how jealousy and misplaced concern can lead to murder and how allocating guilt can be harder than expected—in the haunting Walking Bones. (Serpent's Tail [Consortium, dist.], $14 paper 192p ISBN 1-85242-680-2)
The February weather may be dark and dismal, but the locals provide plenty of color as "a newly installed Englishman" in rural southern France copes with odd neighbors (a secretive doctor, a reclusive Dutch woman, a goat-breeding English alcoholic) and odder fatal accidents in Louis Sanders's engaging debut, Death in the Dordogne, translated by Adriana Hunter. The genial narrator, lacking anything better to do, busies himself with investigating, and he turns up old grudges that lead to new crimes in the first of a series. (Serpent's Tail [Consortium, dist.], $13 paper 152p ISBN 1-85242-673-X)
Originally published in 1942, this madcap mystery by Australian-born sisters Constance and Gwenyth Little pits the sharp-witted nurse Norma Gale against someone—or several someones—with a penchant for chopping up furniture (and people) with an axe at the local isolation hospital. Complicating matters are a dashing young doctor who'd be a boon to the investigation if only he and Norma could get along; an elderly patient with a mysterious carpetbag and a fondness for singing "John Brown's Body"; and several blackmail plots in The Black Thumb, a delightful whodunit with a dash of romance. (Rue Morgue, $14 paper 152p ISBN 0-915230-48-8)
When Silicon Valley filmmaker Bill Damen learns that a guest at his girlfriend's dinner party has died, allegedly of food poisoning, the natural-born PI goes into investigative "stealth mode"; a quick visit to the dead woman's biotech company, LifeScience Molecules, has him convinced he's looking at a coverup, if not downright murder. James Calder follows the determined Bill through state of the art genetics labs and agricultural research departments led by brilliant, ambitious scientists willing to do anything to get to the top in his well-researched and timely debut, Knockout Mouse. (Chronicle, $11.95 paper 272p ISBN 0-8118-3499-9)
The scion of a wine family is found murdered; chef Sunny McCoskey's friend Wade Skord is a prime suspect; and the glassy-winged sharpshooter (an insect) is threatening Napa Valley produce, not to mention Sunny's organic restaurant, in Sharp Shooter, Nadia Gordon's tale of land fever and love gone bad in the promised land. The personable McCoskey navigates wine country denizens and six-burner stoves with equal aplomb, and foodies and oenophiles especially will enjoy Gordon's blend of solid suspense and gourmet culture. (Chronicle, $11.95 paper 272p ISBN 0-8118-3462-X)
Chris Freeburn's Parental Source follows Virginia's innovative Child Crimes Division, headed by the lovely chief Rayven Forrester, with her brother, Quinton, as lead counsel and her ex-lover and old friend Preston Richards as lead investigator, as the capable if nepotistic trio search for a murderer and inaugurate a new series. Rayven, a trained social worker, struggles to remain tough in the face of multiple killings, and there's plenty of family bickering, but Freeburn's solid grasp of police procedures lends credibility to this competent tale. (Quiet Storm [www.quietstormbooks.com], $24.95 272p ISBN 0-9714296-1-8)
With ninjas and Navy SEALS, kidnapping and reformed war criminals, Manchurian gold and a Russian jewelry chest, romance, blackmail and murder, Bob Haller's latest mystery (after The Coiled Serpent) is bigger than a Hollywood blockbuster. Everyone's after $500 million hidden in a cave beneath a Chinese reservoir, and as ex-SEALS Randy Rawlins and Vince Volcano try to nab it, they uncover a decades-old dirty deal, a fashion designer with a strange past and double-crossing agents everywhere they look in the overly complicated and tersely written Manchukuo Gold. (Leister [www.leisterpublishing.com], $14.95 paper 336p ISBN 0-9618234-4-5)
Middle-aged Canadian realtor Belle Palmer returns to investigate old scandals and new deaths after 2000's Northern Winters Are Murder in Lou Allin's Blackflies Are Murder: A Belle Palmer Mystery. The details of daily life—dinners, clothing choices—mesh with a meandering exploration of town history and personal troubles, as Belle becomes privy to an old case of sexual abuse at a school for native children, and as her growing attraction for a new neighbor begins to conflict with her sense that he's somehow involved in the crimes. (RendezVous [Words Distributing, dist.], $10.95 paper 280p ISBN 0-929141-93-8)
Former CBS news correspondent Bert Quint's second novel, the testosterone-heavy thriller Transylvania Red, has "less angst and more fun" than his Rough Cut from a Bygone War: it's the story of a network news team hitting the Romanian pavement for a story on a vampire theme park. But the reporting gets dirty—not to mention dangerous—as the team uncovers murder, avarice and unscrupulous political wheeling and dealing, and also learn that modern-day capitalists can be at least as scary as centuries-old bloodsuckers. (Writers Club [www.iuniverse.com], $15.95 paper 280p ISBN 0-595-22507-1)
The seminary—trained Irish jazz musician—cum—profiler Pat Gallegher steps out of retirement to smartly solve his third mystery in forensic psychologist Richard Helms's tale of serial murder in New Orleans' steamy French Quarter, Juicy Watusi (after Voodoo That You Do). The plot is solid, traditional, hard-boiled fare—Gallegher's on the trail of a killer targeting strippers—and even better is the middle-aged investigator's snappy observations about the Quarter's characters (boss Shorty "looks like he washes his face with a weedwhacker"; tough guy Reynard's hands looked like "Italian sausages attached to birthday balloons"). (Back Alley [7026 High Oaks Dr., Weddington, N.C. 28104], $15.95 320p ISBN 0-9710159-1-0)
