Just as Jason Wilder is about to close the doors to Midnight Investigations, the spectral Elijah Messenger appears. He tells Jason that he is about to be murdered but doesn't identify a suspect. Jason dismisses Messenger as a whack job, until the prophecy is fulfilled the next day when Messenger is killed while presiding over a ritual involving pentagrams, chalices and sacred rods.

Midnight Investigations is retained by the mayor to find and retrieve his daughter, Anne, who has become a disciple of Messenger. Jason's investigation uncovers that Messenger used his powers to dupe vulnerable people out of money--the terminally ill and the elderly, offering false hope in the form of potions or sham communications with dead loved ones. The ingenious plot mixes Messenger's mysterious murderer, his shady activities, and the equally shady occupations at the night club Tantalus, owned by the enigmatic Brandon Archimedes.

Though she is a secondary character, the star of the book is Jason's mother, Victoria, owner of Midnight Investigations. Trailed by her one-eyed dog, Beowulf, she is Wilder's guardian angel when all hope seems lost. The solution to the crime is a real jolt.

Frank Machianno loves cooking, Italian opera, and his daughter. In order to send her to medical school he works hard at several jobs, including running a bait shop on a San Diego pier. He's in his sixties, now, and has retired from the profession that earned him the nickname "Frankie Machine." Working as a killer for the mafia paid well, but rubbing out mobsters can cause lingering bad feelings--and now someone wants him dead. Frank isn't sure which of his greatest hits has come back to haunt him, but the aging hunter will have to use all of his training and instincts to avoid becoming fish bait himself.

Winslow is a terrific writer. His newest novel plays out on a much smaller stage than Power of the Dog (2005), his ambitious and brilliant exploration of the war on drugs. This novel has plot twists that won't catch veteran crime fiction readers by surprise, and it gets off to a slow start, but those are minor complaints. The skillful way Winslow layers Frank's criminal past with his present predicament builds a compelling character study charged with gradually-accelerating, race-to-the-finish suspense.

Set in a remote Appalachian locale in an indeterminate past, this odd and poetic Southern Gothic fuses mythic quests through a twilight landscape with creepy mortuary misdeeds. Kenneth and his sister suspect the local undertaker cheated them when he buried their father, but it isn't until they open the grave that they realize how perverse the mortician truly is. When Kenneth steals photos that are proof of the man's crimes, the undertaker hires Sutter, a sociopathic killer, to get them back. Sutter pursues Kenneth into "the Harrikan," a ruined mining region full of derelict houses, hidden mine shafts, and lunatics crazed with loneliness. Kenneth hopes to cross this desolate wilderness and find his way to a town where there is supposedly an honest lawman--if Sutter doesn't catch up with him first.

It doesn't take more than a few pages to feel drunk on Gay's strange, lyrical language. Using Appalachian turns of phrase and anachronistic words that seem to come from hollows so isolated the residents speak fluent Shakespearean, he tells a kind of warped fairytale that leads further and further from the familiar, into a place that is nightmarish, spooky, and very, very dark.

The tranquility of a Cotswold village is shattered by two events: the murder of eccentric inventor Charlie Bingham and the arrival of a slew of models for a shoot at a stately home. With model Marla comes her consort, Phillip Bethancourt, a man of independent wealth and a curiosity about crime. Soon to arrive is Phillip's Scotland Yard pal, Jack Gibbons. Both men conclude that Charlie's business trips to London were actually assignations with a mysterious woman.

After the woman is identified, the red herrings pile up like snow on Mont Blanc. As each one is discredited, another pops up, to the chagrin of the police and the secret delight of Phillip.

The writing is fluid and the suspense is well crafted--Chan never lets the reader pause for breath. The novel is also well structured: the first part, the search for the mysterious woman; the second part, the search for the murderer; and the last (and shortest) explores the mystery of forgiveness.

The characters are distinctive, especially the owner of the stately home (a wannabe Watson, who fancies himself a gourmet cook) and the selfish, narcissistic model, Marla. Phillip's enchantment with her suggests a certain superficiality on his part. As my grandmother would have said to him, "Phillip, you could do better.

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is uneasy about his special assignment to investigate Party corruption. It will be almost impossible to uncover evidence, for these men wield power. Unfortunately, even Chen's most delicate probing causes the death of a local anchorwoman. Before he can begin to solve this murder, he's ordered to head a writer's delegation going to the US.

The exotic setting and culture of modern China permeate this skillfully told mystery. Wheeling and dealing is a way of life, both for citizens and for cops. The police must always be circumspect in their investigations. No fast action here. Though Chen has special dispensation from an important Party official to dig out corruption, he must work secretly and slowly, both in China and America.Chen is reminiscent of P.D. James' Adam Dalgleish. Like Dalgleish, he is a respected poet and an excellent, though introspective, cop. In frustrating situations Chen can always find a quotable poem. However, unlike Dalgleish, the more social Chen has many useful friends and a mother he worries about. And he relies heavily on dedicated helpers: his loyal assistant Detective Wu and Ghost Hunter, Wu's retired cop father. Other fascinating characters include Xing Xing, a wealthy, powerful, polite criminal; an assortment of wily Party bigwigs; and some temperamental writers.

A crafty plot filled with Chinese politics, vivid characters, nice touches of humor, and lots of relevant Chinese poems scattered throughout the story make this a very good read.

Zack Chasteen survived two years in federal prison for a crime he didn't commit, but he is no match for his significant other's Aunt Trula, who is determined to have him transplant eight palm trees from his business in Miami to Bermuda for her seventieth birthday party. Zack finally gives in and comes to Bermuda to supervise the transplant. On a walk with the gardener, he discovers the body of Australian Ned Hughes, murdered, with his eyes gouged out. Bermudians remember two murders seven years ago, when two divers--one American and one British--were similarly killed. All three men were searching for a ship containing a reliquary encrusted with precious jewels and holding a piece of the True Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, a cross allegedly found by St. Helen and transported to Bermuda on a ship presumed shipwrecked.

If the plot sounds complicated, it is, but Morris is skillful at leading us from plot to subplot and back again. Zack is a delightful character, bemused at the morass in which he finds himself, and somewhat awed that Aunt Trula is sleeping with Sir Teddy Schwartz, who pioneered the field of marine archeology. (It would be like finding your cousin sleeping with Jacques Cousteau.) There is a strong sense of Bermuda and its culture in the overlapping goals of the disparate groups who are seeking and have sought treasure in its waters.

This short book opens with a murder, then transcribes the interviews conducted by a forensic psychologist with the accused man. Is he fit to stand trial? Was it a mercy killing? Though he appears rational now, did he fit the legal definition of "insane" at the moment when he pulled the trigger? The accused agrees to the evaluation partly because he isn't sure of the answers himself.

The narrator, a highly intelligent but troubled artist, comes from a family that has a history of severe mental illness. He pictures his genetic heritage as an inescapable fate, tiny blue capsules of insanity floating through his bloodstream, slowly dissolving and releasing their poison. The interviews uncover a childhood of violence and abuse, a younger brother who was hopelessly schizophrenic--and some facts that turn the narrator's assumptions about his past upside-down.

Hollon has managed to pack a lot of dramatic tension into a claustrophobically confined space, gradually revealing fragments of information in spare and evocative prose. The reader is involved in coming up with a diagnosis, right up to the final, surprising scenes. Though this novel could be described as a legal thriller, the story is really a psychological puzzle-box, filled with questions about the nature of sanity, responsibility, justice, and mercy in a world where there are no easy answers.

Giles Blunt's great talent in By the Time You Read This, the fourth police procedural featuring Canadian detective John Cardinal, is that he takes a worn-out subject and turns it into something better than it is. The story about the cop whose wife kills herself has been around so long that most readers can follow the plot without doing much reading. In Giles' hands, reading is not only necessary, but a reward in and of itself. He can write simply, yet effectively, so that there are a dozen bits that would be throw-away lines in the hands of others but are little nuggets that here bring smiles or wistfulness.

Cardinal's wife Catherine has a long history of mental illness, which means Cardinal is the only one who thinks her suicide is anything but that. Even his partner on the rural Algonquin Bay force, Lise Delorme, figures Cardinal's grief has impaired his judgment (and the scene where Delorme takes Cardinal away from Catherine's dead body is worth reading twice). Yes, the book is too long by about a quarter, an all too common problem these days, but Cardinal's search for the truth about Catherine unfolds skillfully and gracefully. There is the fingerprint on the suicide note, and then the evidence of a string of suicides--and only Cardinal has the insight to figure out why all are connected.