Crime Novels Roundup:

This month's selection of mystery novels chiefly features police procedurals, with settings ranging from San Francisco to Rome, and from various cities in England to faraway North Korea. This genre of crime fiction often focuses on the nitty-gritty of investigations, from seeking evidence to interviewing suspects. Sometimes you get the feeling that the detectives will never find the right villain. And sometimes the storytelling and writing is so good that you are sorry when they finally, inevitably, do. Quite a few of these tales continue a series featuring the cases, lifestyles, and adventures of particular hero or heroine police investigators. All are good choices for summer reading or for other occasions calling for light-fiction entertainment.

First up is P.D. James' The Private Patient (2008) which serves up a country-house murder mystery. Actually, the country house has been remodeled as a medical clinic where select clients stay for plastic surgery treatment and recovery. After one patient is found dead, but not as a complication of the medical procedure, Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his usual sidekicks are brought in, thanks in part to the insistence of another, surviving patient. The victim is a journalist, one who lived most of her life with a scar which she elects to remove at this time because she "no longer has need of it." A close friend with relatives associated with the country house/clinic is also murdered as the plot thickens. Adding confusion to the mix is a suspicious will, a reformed child murderer turned maidservant, a haunted ancient stone circle, and assorted love interests, including that of clinic owner Dr. Chandler-Powell and the former owner of the country house in Dorset, Helena Cressett. The pace of this story is slow, as is true of most of James' works, with plenty of detail, relevant and irrelevant, which effectively delineates characters and locale but also masks the identity of the killer until the author is ready to let Dalgliesh demonstrate his brilliance.

Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens has the lead in H.R. F. Keating's "One Man and His Bomb" (2006). The story opens with reports of a London-based bomb blast which has killed one of Harriet's twin sons and severely wounded the other. Rather than ending any chance of following Harriet on an investigation and instead of just watching her mourn and adjust to the sudden, devastating loss, it turns out that Harriet is given a lone-detective task, apparently as a consolation mechanism by her understanding boss. She checks out a sparse field of suspects in the theft of a potentially deadly substance. On the list are an elderly professor of German literature, a recently fired assistant to the man who held the last vial of the substance, and an unlikely group of ladies who stage protests against genetic engineering. Although Harriet seems a cold fish, this novel is well paced, clever, and delivers a satisfying conclusion.

Next is the lone work in this group that is not exactly in the police-procedural genre, although the hero is a former cop turned private investigator ("A Welcome Grave," by Michael Koryta, 2007). Lincoln Perry spends most of this story as the suspect in the torture-death of the man, Alex Jefferson, who married Perry's fiance. Perry is also present at the suicide of Jefferson's son. Another man is also implicated in a double frame-up that gets increasingly complicated as the story progresses. At one point Perry's current girlfriend Amy is kidnapped. Then mob hitmen put in an appearance. This novel would be considerably more interesting if Lincoln's personality didn't seem so unnecessarily needy and emotional or if the author were more forthcoming about the mysterious figures lurking somewhere in the background, directing the bad guys.

Chief Inspector Alan Banks and Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot take up a new case in Peter Robinson's "All the Colors of Darkness" (2009). The victims, a gay couple including a theater professional and a retired MI-6 spook, appear to have executed a murder-suicide pact. But there are some inconsistencies, of course. A general atmosphere of anxiety pervades this story where domestic spies follow Banks around and threaten him and his new girlfriend, a bomb explodes on a London street when he is passing by, and hints of other terrorist threats abound. One interesting character introduced here is Tomasina Savage, a private investigator with lots of moxie. Here's hoping that she shows up again in the next, and perhaps far better, novel in the series.

A beguiling and wealthy widow mourns the death of her third husband in Cassandra Chan's "The Young Widow" (2005). Detective sergeant Jack Gibbons and his friend, Philip Bethancourt, a consultant to the police, look into the death-by-poisoning case abandoned by others because of conflicts of interest. Everyone suspects the alluring Annette Berowne, especially as her husband had been much older than she. Witnesses are interviewed numerous times; but the most important clues are discovered by Bethancourt, not Gibbons, who jeopardizes his career by falling in love with Annette. One critical piece of evidence emerges as a misunderstanding of names, of which Mrs. Berowne is the one actually seen at a particular juncture. This story is neatly plotted and provides a pleasant mystery puzzle.

A homicide cop and a private eye team up to solve a high-profile, double-murder case in San Francisco ("The Hunt Club," by John Lescroart, 2006). Wyatt Hunt, a former social worker and now a private investigator, and boyhood friend Devin Juhle, the police detective, deal with the killing of a federal judge, who is found with another victim, a young woman who is later discovered to be the judge's mistress. The judge's wife is the initial suspect but is soon ruled out. A TV trial reporter is then suspected because of her sudden disappearance. Hunt is convinced of her innocence and very concerned to find out what happened to her. Juhle's partner is pushing to declare the reporter guilty, a probable suicide, and to close the case. Improbably, the story leads to a Western-style shootout in a vineyard. The book's title refers to Hunt's PI practice and also to a group consisting of of Hunt, Juhle, some lawyer friends, and some young adults Hunt helped when he worked in child protective services.

Rome is the setting for David Hewson's latest literary mystery story ("The Garden of Evil," 2008), which stars detective Nic Costa. Unfortunately, Costa loses his new wife early on in the story and resolves to pursue the killer, an apparently untouchable aristocrat who owns a sprawling family palace set in the middle of the old city. The building encompasses all sorts of odd spaces, including a studio thought to have once been used by the Renaissance painter Caravaggio. An erotic painting by the master is thought to be the key to a series of murders committed by Franco Malaspina and his cohorts. Agata Graziano, a nun and a Caravaggio scholar, assists in the investigation by authenticating the painting and noting aspects of Caravaggio's life and times that may be relevant to the current situation. This story is rather absurd, filled with coincidence and overblown in parts, but is nonetheless fun to read, although the details about a long-dead painter's life, methods, and philosophy may seem a bit tedious to some.

For the North Korea story ("Hidden Moon," by James Church, 2007) readers follow Inspector O as he is tasked to check out a bank robbery. This beautifully written, Kafkaesque tale features tense but hidden bureaucratic and political intrigues of the sort where one false step sends you to a concentration camp or hard-labor outpost. The inspector takes comfort in pieces of wood, whether ash, oak, pine, or rosewood, and attempts to gain insight into the ways of the world and the vagaries of people. The trouble at the bank and elsewhere in Pyongyang seems to be caused by foreigners, including the Kazakh bank manageress, some mysterious Germans, a Russian dealer in silk stockings, and a visiting British VIP who is preceded by a British security professional. A shoot-out in a cemetery figures in the ending, but the initial bank robbery case is never resolved. O's boss worries a lot, warning O not to do too much of anything. Meanwhile, the influential but nameless man in the brown suit, tired of suspecting O of corruption, finally decides that the case, whether it is just or robbery or is potentially an internationally engineered coup attempt, is concluded.

The last novel for this month is "Death in the Morning," by Sheila Radley (2006, first published in 1978). Chief Inspector Quantrell welcomes a new recruit, the university-educated and gung-ho Detective Sergeant Tait, who would much rather follow up an apparently accidental drowning than a case involving stolen pigs. Still worried about an unresolved missing-persons matter, Quantrell allows Tait considerable latitude here but soon becomes intrigued by the difficulty in pinpointing details of the victim's last hours of life. The girl's mother, relatives, friends, and teachers all seem to be lying about something. Quantrell eventually solves the puzzle; and the murderer, in the best Agatha Christie tradition, turns out to be the least likely suspect. While the setting may be cozily quaint, the mystery is solid, well plotted, and believable.

Watching detectives figure out clues, question witnesses, and study the scenes of crimes is a guilty pleasure made more enjoyable by good, descriptive writing with little hint of the hard work that goes into creating plausible alternate universes where the good guys finally catch the bad guys and then go home to happy or, more likely, unhappy family lives in London, or Cleveland, or Pyongyang, or San Francisco. Novelists who produce good crime fiction, such as those mentioned in this essay, should be applauded. Let's hope the authors all find many more puzzling events or intriguing evil-doers to challenge the detective skills of their protagonists. Happy reading!