Investigations and Thrill Rides:

This month's book roundup features a varied mix of mysteries and thrillers, of stories with a hint of comedy and ones with an extraordinary burden of tragedy, and of remote and familiar settings. Detectives, assassins, artists, lawyers, and spies are lead characters or sidekicks and good guys or bad guys. There's a suspicious CSI character in Oregon and a warmly reassuring lady detective in Botswana, a flakey painter in San Francisco and a supermom who is also a sheriff in Arizona, a Japanese-American contract killer who is a global traveler and a retired cop who must find someone with a new identity before contract killers find her. These novels are all recently published and recommended for leisure reading.

First, let's look at Hailey Lind's "Brush with Death" (2007, paperback) where artist/sleuth Annie Kinkaid once again fails to stay out of trouble while working on a cemetery restoration project. Crypt thieves, a possible lost Raphael masterpiece, and keeping Annie's art-forger grandfather out of Interpol's clutches figure into the story-line. Her landlord is a security expert with ties to the FBI and her love interest, a supposedly reformed international art thief, is apparently committed to setting up as an art security consultant. Annie's friends and assistants include a Goth girlfriend, a plus-sized biker chick, a Bosnian sculptor and his whole extended family, an anthropology grad student, and an elderly diabetic woman who may have held the key to the Raphael mystery the whole time. This novel also includes details about faux finishing techniques.

Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates four deaths occurring on one weekend in "Damage Control" by J.A. Jance (2008, hardcover). One event is an apparent double suicide, another finds a man dead in a mobile-home fire, and the last proves to be a body in a trash bag which washed out from a shallow grave after a huge rainstorm. Joanna deals with the squabbling daughters of the parents who drove their car off a scenic cliffside viewpoint in front of a lunchtime crowd of witnesses. The husband of one of the daughters acts suspiciously; additionally, his parents too had died recently. Meanwhile, the mobile-home case is ruled accidental, with faulty wiring cited as the cause; the displaced family moves into a newly fixed-up place on Joanna's property. On the personal side, Joanna is dealing also with a newborn baby, a teenage daughter, a writer husband who wants to go on book tour, and a mother who has been acting strangely. The body in the trash bag turns out to be that of a disabled woman who had gone missing from a group home. A subplot follows the theme of husbands cheating on wives and involves Joanna's idealized father who has been dead for many years.

Professional killer John Rain discovers that he has a son in "The Last Assassin" by Barry Eisler (2006, hardcover). This stunning news causes John to relax his usual attentive caution and actually make a mistake. Rectifying the mistake results in a high body count as this thriller follows Rain and two sidekicks on travels from Paris to New York, Rio, Barcelona, and especially to Tokyo. However, the people killed all appear to deserve their fate. Featured among the methods of killing are sniper fire, beheadings, knife fights, and chemically induced heart attacks. John's tender feelings for his son are a sharp contrast to his cool demeanor when working on targets. A high-class gentlemen's club in Tokyo is the scene of one massacre; but the bodies also fall in New York, where the jazz-pianist mother of John's son resides.

Police detective Dan Cooper and local sleuths Drew Slocombe and Maggs puzzle over a missing young woman and also over a missing little girl in Rebecca Tope's "The Sting of Death" (2002, hardcover). Convoluted family relationships and previous histories muddy the waters in this mystery which is dense with characters, all seemingly acting out of sorts. When not unraveling puzzling cases, Drew and Maggs run an undertaking and burial business on private land. Dan takes a shine to Maggs as they try to figure out what happened and who did whatever. Outspoken personality Roma, the mother of the original missing young woman, fusses with her beehives amid the chaos as an altogether different young woman turns up murdered. Questions linger about guilt and innocence right up to the end. Readers who don't appreciate stories where little kids die, whether from leukemia or accidentally, probably should give this novel a miss.

Ex-detective Jack Till decides he must find a former client whom he helped gain a new identity in order to escape unknown killers in Thomas Perry's "Silence" (2007, paperback). Now, six years after her engineered disappearance, the former Wendy Harper's testimony that she is actually still alive is necessary to prevent the conviction of a man accused of her murder on circumstantial evidence. A married team of contract killers targeting Wendy follow Jack as he tries to figure out who and where the hidden Wendy is. Back-stories for all of the characters are detailed in this suspenseful and absorbing tale, which features unexpected twists right up to the ending. Wendy must give up a cushy life with a husband and children (not her own) and may find happiness with Jack whose own wife left him after given birth to a daughter with Down's Syndrome. The final revelation of who the ultimate bad guy is comes as an anti-climax, while the contract-killer team looks set to take each other out while vacationing in Spain.

Judith Cutler's "Life Sentence" (2005, hardcover) is a police procedural set in Kent, Great Britain, where Chief Superintendent Fran Harman, nearing retirement, focuses on an almost cold case involving a comatose patient whose identity has never been discovered. There's also a child-abduction case where her expertise and gift for intuition lead to a happy resolution. This novel piles on the office politics, but it also delivers a nice love interest which contrasts with the ill-temper displayed by Fran's relatives. In fact, while the querulousness of Fran's parents and animosity of her older sister seem a bit over the top, these annoying habits do offer an explanation for Fran's go-it-alone style of investigation. Readers may be left wondering what Fran will do next after she retires, because it seems obvious that burying herself in the country to contemplate her garden is not a likely scenario.

In "Proof Positive," by Philip Margolin (2006, paperback) lawyers must deal with difficult clients and damning evidence. Sometimes this evidence seems a little too good or too convenient to be true, especially when relatively honest villains proclaim their innocence. The murders of a criminologist and of a defense lawyer finally lead father-daughter lawyers Amanda and Frank Jaffe to the truth. There are some realistic courtroom scenes, as well as forensic details of interest to fans of CSI-type television series. This story, set in Portland, Oregon, does not feature much local color, although some landmarks and neighborhoods are briefly described. The author, solid in his characterizations and plotting, keeps up the suspense but never loses sight of the perils faced by innocent and not-so-innocent defendants.

For a change of pace, let's travel to Africa for "The Miracle at Speedy Motors," by Alexander McCall Smith (2008, hardcover). Here we find Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of a ladies' detective agency in Botswana's capital city, working on cases featuring a long-lost relative and a writer of anonymous letters. Characters already well established in this ongoing series show up to break new ground: perennial mechanic apprentice Charlie and very particular associate detective Grace Makutsi actually say nice things to other and even join forces to resolve the problem of a too-large bed; orphanage matron Mma Potokwane, as usual insisting on securing the unpaid services of Mma Ramotswe's husband, auto specialist Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, succeeds in providing information on the missing-relative case; Mma Ramotse's treasured tiny white van develops a mysterious knocking sound and may finally be running its last miles; Grace's fiance Phuti Radiphuti proves very understanding in the matter of the overlarge bed and even enjoys taking part in a case Grace is handling on her own; and, lastly, the crippled daughter of Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is not downcast by the failure of an attempted cure. This wonderful novel provides a well-woven plot, leavened with sad and happy events, in a peaceful, even bucolic, setting.

Spies run amok in David Wolstencroft's "Contact Zero" (2005, hardcover). This thriller fairly reeks with betrayal and sends it protagonists all over the world from their starting point, spy school in London. Ben Sinclair and cohorts Lucy, Jamie, and Ned discover that they are the last survivors of their class of newly minted spies. But now they are also wanted fugitives, with blown covers and assorted trumped-up charges filed against them. They travel first to find each other and then set out on an arduous quest to find the legendary, possibly mythical, Contact Zero, which may be a person or an organization or merely some sort of safe haven for UK ex-spies. This novel is fast-paced, with puzzling clues to be deciphered, odd folks to be questioned, and insidious betrayal to be revealed. Somehow, these intrepid young people have plenty of money and false passports and tricks up their sleeves. When finally found, Contact Zero is not at all what was expected. There are some loose ends here, and a couple of typos too, but there's lots of adventure to satisfy armchair spy-story aficionados.

This set of nine novels offers glimpses into worlds most of us will never know except in stories. Some of the tales are mesmerizing and all are well written, with memorable characters and featuring neat or clever or preposterous plots. Take your pick and relax with a good book!