British Crime

Veteran Gerald Hammond (Dirty Dollar) delivers another diverting contemporary crime caper, The Snatch. Two amateur kidnappers find the tables turned when their victims, a couple of young girls, propose a robbery scheme of their own. (Severn, $25.99 224p ISBN 0-7278-5895-5; June)

Joel Lane's dark, psychological novel, The Blue Mask, explores the consequences of a vicious attack that leaves one member of a homosexual pair with terrible facial scars. Lane is the co-editor of the anthology Birmingham Noir (Forecasts, Apr. 7). (Serpent's Tail [mz@mzpr.com], $15 paper 224p ISBN 1-85242-688-8; June)

Fans of the prolific Edward Marston (The Bawdy Basket, etc.) will welcome back architect Christopher Redmayne and constable Jonathan Bale in their fourth Restoration mystery, The Frost Fair. Since the chief suspect in the murder of an Italian fencing master found below the frozen Thames is Redmayne's own brother, the young architect has no choice but to try and prove the accused innocent. (Allison & Busby [IPM dist.], $24.95 256p ISBN 0-7490-0600-5; June 1)

Sir Baldwin Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock investigate a Dartmoor murder in Michael Jecks's The Mad Monk of Gidleigh, the 14th entry in his dependable medieval West Country mystery series. Did an isolated young priest do in the pregnant daughter of the local miller—or could it have been one of her many admirers or even her strangely behaving father? (Headline [Trafalgar Sq. dist.], $27.50 320p ISBN 0-7553-0168-4; June 1)

Anglophiles will relish Scene of the Crime: A Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction, by Julian Earwaker and Kathleen Becker, which surveys the locales of British mysteries past and present from Scotland to the West Country. P.D. James provides a foreword to this attractive volume, illustrated throughout with color and b&w photos. (Aurum [Trafalgar Sq. dist.], $24.95 paper 272p ISBN 1-85410-821-2; June 1)