Detectives in Teams and Working Alone:

Quirky lone detectives and bona-fide teams handle the various cases, usually featuring murders, in this month's selection of light novels and thrillers. Most of these stories take place in either Great Britain or in the U.S., with one set in Laos and another in Italy for a little international flavoring. Among the loner investigators is an elderly coroner, a newspaperman on a visit to Philadelphia, an 11-year-old chemistry whiz, and a Sicilian curmudgeon who likes to eat and swim but hates the heat of late summer. As for the teams, two are husband-and-wife duos with relationship issues as well as investigative skills, one uneasily links a convalescing superintendent with his erstwhile subordinate, and the last one brings together two librarians interested in the current condition and future status of their mobile library van. The writing level of these yarns is high as is their entertainment quotient. Let's check out some brief plot summaries.

Catharine Coulter's TAILSPIN (2008) presents husband-and-wife team Savich and Sherlock with cases involving assassination attempts. One case revolves around a psychiatrist struggling with rapidly accelerating dementia and apparently inadvertently threatening the privacy of important clients, while the other is basically an ugly family-inheritance squabble with the added dimension of a newly found relative with a desire to reveal an ugly truth about the family's late VIP, a U.S. senator. Unhindered by ordinary bureaucratic red tape and seemingly able to tap into unlimited resources, Savich and Sherlock, all the while engaging in witty repartee, manage to bring both cases to acceptable resolution.

With a slightly more realistic edge, despite certain elements of mysticism, Colin Cotterill's ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS (2007) sends Dr. Siri Paiboun, a coroner and amateur detective inspired by the mysteries of Inspector Maigret of Paris, to southern Laos to investigate an electrocution and a mysterious drowning of a young schoolboy. Incidentally, he uncovers a coup plot as well but manages to keep everyone safe from the executioners even though the story's setting is the Vietnam-favoring, communist-regime era of 1977. There is even a love interest for Siri, who is said to be in his 70's, as well as a ride on a dolphin's back.

In DRY HEAT (2004) by Jon Talton, a deputy sheriff specializing in cold cases requiring historical research and his wife, a cybercrimes expert, become involved in the puzzling death of a vagrant who was carrying the badge of a long-dead FBI agent in his jacket lining. Actually, the wife spends much of the novel in protective custody because a drug warlord is seeking revenge. The setting here is Phoenix and, while some familiarity with the town certainly would add to enjoyment of the novel, the plotting is successful and suspenseful.

FULL DARK HOUSE (2003) by Christopher Fowler draws on the fabled team of Bryant and May of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, although Bryant spends much of the novel as the presumed victim of a terrorist bomb. The present day event harks back to the duo's first case, which occurred during the London Blitz of World War II. A series of murders in a famous theater are revisited, leading to the discovery of the unexpected survival of the real culprit, as this haunting mystery calls up elements of "Phantom of the Opera" with gory details and odd clues, like the missing false teeth and dental records. Readers familiar with Bryant and May will appreciate the minor characters who show off with cameos from their offspring and/or parents.

Convalescing Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel irritates his happily in-charge subordinate Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe in Reginald Hill's THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT (2008) by merely being on the spot when murder is committed. This long and involved police procedural focuses on a seaside resort town on the verge of a major development push where the grand dame of the place suddenly is found quite dead in a roasting pit. Much of the story, which is strong on character descriptions and scene settings, unfolds via emails from a young psychologist to her sister in Africa or via digital memo recording as still-ailing Dalziel muses about life, people, motives, and whether he can go home soon. A nemesis from previous novels in the series, Franny Roote, shows up in a wheel chair and seems to be in the thick of things in the little town.While Pascoe appears to solve the case, the full story is, of course, only known to Dalziel, who gathers all the lose ends and witnesses all the dishing out of just desserts.

Not exactly a mystery but more an entertaining comedy is THE BOOK STOPS HERE (2008) by Ian Sansom. Feckless but well-meaning librarians Israel Armstrong and Ted Carson travel from Tumdrum, Northern Ireland, to London for a mobile library van convention. They visit Israel's Mom and manage to lose their van. Discovering what happened to the van, securing its return, and managing to win a popular-choice award at the convention take up much of this funny and endearing tale. Poor Israel learns at last that his girlfriend has left him, fears that Ted and his Mom are much too friendly, yet finds that he actually looks forward to life back in time-warped Tumdrum. The plot here is fairly simple, but the writing is rife with whimsy and playful dialogue.

For a considerable change of pace, try THE BLONDE (2006) by Duane Swierczynski. This one starts with a bang, as a woman tells a man at an airport bar that she has poisoned his drink, and keeps up an astonishingly break-neck momentum from there. The fast pace is necessary as the plot, if the reader actually had time to examine it, doesn't really click with credibility. Supposedly, nanotechnology gone haywire is able to infect people and kill them if they spend more than 10 seconds without another person within 10 feet at all times. Naturally, the man at the bar, Jack Eisley, refuses to believe the blonde, Kelly White; but, eventually, he tries to help her as well as a murderous government agent named Kowalski, whose hobby is taking out the local Mafia members. Unbelievably, this story actually has a happy ending, sort of.

Operating on another level is Alan Bradley's THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE (2009), a novel set in 1950's Britain and showcasing an 11-year-old girl with a gift for chemistry and a passion for poisons. The dead man found in the cucumber patch was known to her father, who becomes the prime suspect. Flavia, the precocious child, figures out the mystery, including the who, why, and how of the killer, while continuing her scientific experiments and plotting clever harassment of her two older sisters. Vintage postage stamps, including one stolen from the King of England, figure into a plot which also features a dramatic rescue of Flavia by the gardener, a distressed war veteran, and one of her sisters. The pie in the title refers to a pastry covering a snipe, a bird smuggled into England as part of a blackmail intrigue targeting Flavia's father.

Last up this month is Andrea Camilleri's fascinating take life in Sicily, AUGUST HEAT (2009), as viewed by the novel's protagonist, police detective Salvo Montalbano. First, Montalbano deals with a missing child (found), then with illegal construction (what can you do), and finally with a body in a trunk (time for some actual police work). Montalbano's top suspect, the builder Spitaleri, has a great alibi and is virtually untouchable anyway because of connections, both political and criminal (meaning the Mafia). The case is eventually resolved but not without emotional and moral torment for the irascible but clever and warm-hearted Montalbano.

There is plenty of variety in this month's recommendations--from the strictly professional approaches to the naively amateur attempts to follow up on clues, from thrill-ride adventures to patient layouts of motives and opportunities, and from explosions and serial murders to refugee camps, stamps, lost vans, and apartments buried in sand. Take your pick and get lost in fictional worlds!