August Publications

"Slightly balding, overweight, 30-something Yorkshireman" and PI-about-town Steve Strong returns in British sports journalist Phil Andrews's sophomore soccer—or football, rather—mystery, in which the sharp-tongued sleuth must save Mother England's soccer team from disgrace, not to mention considerable danger. The London Times called Own Goals "a pinch of Chandler, a dash of Nick Hornby," and that surprisingly good fusion continues in Goodbye, Vienna, as Steve logs hours as a bodyguard for the coach, a nuisance to the police (who, contrary to his opinion, call the death of a former player suicide) and a bloodhound on the trail of a missing goalie as the World Cup looms and a betting scam rears its ugly head. (Flame [Trafalgar Square, dist.], $12 paper 311p ISBN 0-340-74824-9)

Everybody's after something: calculating Marla Graycastle wants her husband dead; bad boy Bona's looking for an in with the mob; ex-monk Decker has his eye on waitress Suzzy (not to mention an obsession with Niagara Falls); and Suzzy could use a break from her double life as an undercover customs agent. What looks like a straight-up hit on Marla's milquetoast mate escalates into mayhem as love blooms, good crime goes bad and people get what's coming to them in Stephen F. Wilcox's dryly witty, well-paced Niagara Fall: A Novel of Crime and Comedy. (Mystery & Suspense/iUniverse, $18.95 paper 305p ISBN 0-595-22146-7)

Fourteen accounts of immoral deeds uncovered (and even sometimes committed) by moral people comprise the absorbing Murder Most Catholic: Divine Tales of Profane Crimes, edited by Ralph McInerny, author of the popular Father Dowling and Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey mystery series. About half are set in the Middle Ages, a time of rich fodder for writers who "wish to meld murder and the religious," while the remainder explore contemporary milieus and themes: in Stephen Dentinger's "Cemetery of the Innocents," a 15th-century danse macabre turns truly deadly; in Ed Gorman's "Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned," a priest at his 25th college reunion realizes that his lifetime of good works has failed to atone for a murder he committed in his youth. (Cumberland [431 Harding Industrial Dr., Nashville, Tenn. 37211], $14.95 paper 248p ISBN 1-58182-260-X)

With twice as many presidential pets as presidents in the White House over the decades, why not give these beloved creatures—dogs and cats, sure, but also bears, ponies, goats and alligators—their own moment in the spotlight? In White House Pet Detectives: Tales of Crime and Mystery at the White House from a Pet's-Eye View, editor Carole Nelson Douglas gathers 14 head-scratchers and whodunits (all but one new), including Grand Master Edward D. Hoch's "Martha's Parrot," the story of a pet bird who witnesses a murder during George Washington's tenure, and Jan Grape's "Tabby Won't Tell," in which a young Tad Lincoln's trust in his cat helps his father discover a murder. (Cumberland, $14.95 paper 244p ISBN 1-58182-243-X)