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Hotlists 2008

Fiction | Zoho DB

Crime Fiction | Zoho DB

Crime Fiction - embedded

 

Seeing Stars

Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).

The review journal assigns the star.

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Starred Reviews

Crime Fiction All Stars (1997-2008)

March 30, 2008

Titles which received three or more starred reviews from major review sources.

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• Those Bones Are Not My Child
  Author: Bambara, Toni Cade
  Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN: 0679442618 Date: 1999
  Library Journal PW Kirkus
  The novel that Bambara was working on at the time of her death in 1995 - a story that puts readers at the center of the nightmare of the Atlanta child murders.
• The Untouchable
  Banville, John
  Knopf List Price: $24 ISBN: 0679451080 Date: 1997
  LJ PW Kirkus
  Twenty years after his "retirement", ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel - a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.
• The Silver Swan
  Author: Banville, John/Benjamin Black
  Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 9780805081534 Date: 2008
  PW Booklist LJ
  The inimitable Quirke--the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist--returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman's dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions.
  Suggested Reading: Irish Crime Fiction
  Updated 2.26.08
  
• Big Trouble
  Author: Barry, Dave
  Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399145672 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus Library Journal
  The humorous Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist makes his fiction debut with a ferociously funny novel about love and mayhem in south Florida, and the the life-changing events that rumble through a odd-ball family after two hit men pull up to their door.
• Industry of Souls
  Author: Booth, Martin
  Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312242034 Date: 1999
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  On his 80th birthday, a British citizen arrested in the 1950s for spying in the Soviet Union looks back on his life in Russia - his harrowing life in the "gulag" and his quiet life 20 years later in the village.
• Cover Story
  Author: Boyle, Gerry
  Publisher: Prime Crime $ 22.95 ISBN: 042516893x Date: 2000
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  Who killed the mayor of New York City? The answer lies in award-winner Boyle's biggest and boldest novel yet. "Boyle is the genuine article."- Robert B. Parker.
• Eye of the Abyss
  Author: Browne, Marshall
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312311567 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-nominated mystery, The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, now delivers an atmospheric and powerful thriller set during the rise of the Nazi party.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 9.22.03
• The Guards
  Author: Bruen, Ken
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312303556 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW LJ
  In this mesmerizing work of crime fiction, an ex-member of The Guards--Ireland's police force--is approached in a Galway bar by a dazzling woman with a strange request and a rumor about his talent for finding things.
  Updated 12.23.02
• Purple Cane Road
  Author: Burke, James Lee
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385488440 Date: 2000
  Booklist Library Journal PW
  While helping out an old friend, Dave Robicheaux is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks if he is Mae Guillory's boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. Thus begins Burke's finest Robicheaux novel, a work with all the dimensions of a classic.
  
• Cimarron Rose
  Author: Burke, James Lee
  Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $24.95 ISBN:0786862380 Date: 1997
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  The acclaimed author of the Dave Robicheaux novels presents a new work that explodes with the violence, beauty, and history of the American West. To defend his illegitimate son, who has been wrongly accused of murder, Billy Bob Holland takes on the powerful class interests controlling the small town of Deaf Smith, Texas. As a result, he ends up facing the demons of his own past.
• Crusader's Cross
  Author: Burke, James Lee
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25.95 ISBN: 0743277198 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Dave Robicheaux, the tough, former New Orleans cop, is back in perhaps his strongest and most exciting thriller. On a visit to a dying cop whom he once hated, Robicheaux is led towards the solution of the disappearance of a young woman he and his brother once knew--and family secrets he must confront and resolve.
  Suggested Reading: P.I. Stars | Hard-Boiled
  Updated 6.6.05
• The Emperor of Ocean Park
  Author: Carter, Stephen L.
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375413634 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  The Emperor of Ocean Park is as brilliant in its suspense as in its acute social observation. Set in the privileged world of New York-Washington-Martha's Vineyard upper-crust African-American society and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school, it tells the story of a complex family with a single seductive and dangerous link to the shadowlands of crime.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 4/18/02
• The Enemy: A Jack Reacher Novel
  Author: Child, Lee
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 25 ISBN: 0385336675 Date: 2004
  LJ Kirkus PW Booklist
  Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier's son. An elite military cop, he was one of the army's brightest stars. But in every soldier's life, there is a turning point. One case that can shatter a career or turn a lawman into a renegade. And make him question words like honor, valor, and duty. For Jack Reacher, this is that case....
  Updated 3.22.04
• Persuader
  Author: Child, Lee
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385336667 Date: 2003
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Introducing Persuader, Child's most electrifying suspense novel yet--featuring his utterly unique hero, ex-Army cop Jack Reacher. This time Reacher goes undercover to investigate the disappearance of a federal agent from a drug dealer's home.
  Updated 3.31.03
• Without Fail
  Author: Child, Lee
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399148612 Date: 2002
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  Assassins have the new vice president in their sights, until Jack Reacher picks up their trail. For only Reacher has the head and the heart to corner his prey and bring them to justice--without fail.
  Updated 5/9/02
• Hard Way: Jack Reacher
  Author: Child, Lee
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 25 ISBN: 0385336691 Date: 2006
  Booklist LJ PW
  In Lee Child's new thriller, ex-military cop Jack Reacher sees more than most people would . . . and because of that, he's thrust into an explosive situation that's about to blow up in his face. For the only way to find the truth--and save two innocent lives--is to do it the way Reacher does it best: the hard way.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 3.27.06
• A Corpse in the Koryo
  Author: Church, James
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312352085 Date: 2006
  Booklist PW Library Journal
  Like Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy and the Inspector Arkady Renko novels, A Corpse in the Koryo introduces another unfamiliar world (North Korea), a perplexing universe seemingly so alien that the rules are an enigma to the reader and even, sometimes, to Inspector O. Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer. This is a chilling portrayal that, in the end, leaves us wondering if what at first seemed unknowable may simply be too familiar for comfort. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.10.06
• Lost Light
  Author: Connelly, Michael
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316154601 Date: 2003
  Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
  The bestselling author of City of Bones and Chasing the Dime brings lone wolf Harry Bosch out of retirement and on a wild excursion into evil, seeking the truth about a cold case that still haunts the LAPD, movie studios--and Bosch himself.
  Updated 3.31.03
• The Closers
  Author: Connelly, Michael
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 26.95 ISBN: 0316734942 Date: 2005
  Booklist PW LJ
  The death of a teenage girl almost two decades ago comes back to haunt all of L.A.--and detective Harry Bosch--in this spellbinding new thriller from "New York Times" bestselling author Michael Connelly.
  Updated 4.19.05
• Echo Park
  Author: Connelly, Michael
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 26.99 ISBN: 0316734950 Date: 2006
  Kirkus Booklist Lj
  Detective Harry Bosch--"one of the most complex crime fighters around" ("People")--reopens one of his own unsolved cases and comes face to face with a psychotic killer he has been seeking for years, in this thrilling new novel by Michael Connellly, bestselling author of The Lincoln Lawyer.
  Updated 10.18.06
• Blood Mud
  Author: Constantine, K.C.
  Publisher: Mysterious Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0892966475 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Mario Balzic returns for another ride through the fiercely authentic American language and landscape that is the hallmark of this acclaimed series from the author of Brushback.
• Saving Room for Dessert
  Author: Constantine, K.C.
  Publisher: Mysterious $ 23.95 ISBN: 0892967633 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  For former Air Force veteran and ex-mall security guard William Rayford, making the cut as Rocksburg's first African-American cop fulfilled one of his life's ambitions, even though it sometimes still gives him a case of the Steel City Blues. Rayford well knows this town's dark history of prejudice, but dealing with it is something else.
  Updated 7.22.02
• L.A. Requiem
  Author: Crais, Robert
  Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385495838 Date: 1999
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  A past vendetta strains the partnership of investigators Joe Pike and Elvis Cole when Pike becomes a suspect in the death of his former lover.
• Demolition Angel
  Author: Crais, Robert
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385495846 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Library Journal
  On the heels of the bestselling and critically acclaimed L.A. Requiem, Crais returns to the City of Angels with the most ambitious novel of his career, a stand-alone thriller featuring a complex and engaging female protagonist. When Carol Starkey, a bomb squad technician, survives an explosion designed to kill her, she is pitted against a frighteningly brilliant mastermind for the modern age.
  Updated 4/13/00.
• See Delphi and Die: Marcus Didius Falco
  Author: Davis, Lindsey
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312357656 Date: 2006
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  Humor, surprises, and domestic irony await Roman sleuth Falco as he attempts to solve the disappearance of two newlyweds on their honeymoon trip to Ancient Greece.
  Updated 4.3.06
• Medicus
  Author: Downie, Ruth
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781596912311 Date: 2007
  Booklist LJ Kirkus
  Gaius Petrius Ruso is a divorced and down-on-his luck army doctor who has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. When he rescues an injured slave girl, she drags trouble in her wake.
  Updated 11.1.06
• Under the Snow
  Author: Ekman, Kerstin
  Publisher: Doubleday Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385488661 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus LJ
  From the acclaimed author of Blackwater comes another deeply atmospheric psychological thriller set in northern Sweden. When a man is murdered at a mah-jongg party turned sour, the local police constable receives conflicting reports as to the exact cause of the murder. Gradually, the facts of the case emerge under the relentless summer sun.
• High Five
  Author: Evanovich, Janet
  Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312203039 Date: 1999
  Booklist Kirkus PW
  The bestselling author of Four to Score brings back bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, in her fifth hilarious, high-octane thriller. Out of bail skippers and rent money, Stephanie throws caution to the wind and engages in some morally correct yet marginally legal enterprises, including tracking down her Uncle Fred, who's missing after arguing with his garbage company.
• Hot Six
  Author: Evanovich, Janet
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312205406 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  In this sixth Stephanie Plum adventure, Ranger the super bounty hunter is on the lam and Stephanie has to team up with vice-cop Joe Morelli to find him. But has Ranger really broken the law? Is he a psychotically dangerous criminal? "(Evanovich) is in a class by herself when it comes to plot and humor".--Liz Smith, syndicated columnist.
  
• Gas City
  Author: Estleman, Loren D.
  Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780765319562 Date: 2008
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Setting this drama in a blue-collar metropolis dominated by an oil company, Estleman crafts a fascinating, deadly tapestry of love, ambition, revenge, and redemption--in all, a stunning portrait of the human condition.
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• Avenger
  Author: Forsyth, Frederick
  Publisher: St Martins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0312319517 Date: 2003
  Booklist PW LJ
  In this heart-stopping thriller of murder, intrigue, deception, and revenge, attorney Calvin Dexter is called upon to settle an old score. But the game is changing, and this time CIA agent Kevin McBride must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.
  Updated 9.08.03
• Never Fear
  Author: Frost, Scott
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399153403 Date: 2006
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  Pasadena homicide detective Alex Delillo faces demons from the past in this chilling psychological suspense by the "L.A. Times" bestselling author of Run the Risk.
  Updated 5.10.06
• Red Gold
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679451862 Date: 1999
  Library Journal PW Booklist Kirkus
  Within the fragmented French resistance, an intelligence officer decides to strike a deal with the devil in this rich and suspenseful part thriller, part love story spy novel.
• Blood of Victory
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505741 Date: 2002
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  From "the greatest living writer of espionage fiction" (The Houston Chronicle) comes the story of I.A. Serebin, recruited in Istanbul in 1940 by an agent of the British secret service for a desperate operation to block Hitler's conquest of Europe.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 8.13.02
• The Foreign Correspondent
  Author: Furst, Alan
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400060192 Date: 2006
  PW Kirkus Booklist LJ
  "The greatest living writer of espionage fiction" ("Houston Chronicle") returns with his most suspenseful and stylish novel yet, in which an international news correspondent's secret life leads him to become a target for assassination.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 5.15.06
• Undercurrents
  Author: Fyfield, Frances
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670896365 Date: 2001
  Kirkus LJ PW
  For 20 years, Henry Evans has been haunted by a blurred but shining memory of his lost love, Francesca Chisholm. Now this shy American has come looking for her in her hometown on the English coast. What he finds there is not what he expects.
  
• What Came Before He Shot Her
  Author: George, Elizabeth
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060545623 Date: 2006
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  In her compelling new mystery, George explores the unforgettable events leading up to a murder.
  Updated 8.28.06
• O is for Outlaw
  Author: Grafton, Sue
  Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0805059555 Date: 1999
  Booklist Kirkus Library Journal PW
  Delving more deeply into P.I. Kinsey Millhone's past than any of Grafton's previous 14 novels, O is for Outlaw finds Kinsey dealing with a man who has purchased the contents of a defaulted storage unit - for 30 bucks, he'll sell her the lot. A letter she finds amid childhood memorabilia forces her to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage - and about an old unsolved murder.
• Valley of Bones
  Author: Gruber, Michael
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060577665 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Gruber explores the nature of faith and madness in this brilliantly conceived follow-up to Tropic of Night, his dazzling debut thriller novel.
  Updated 1.23.05
• The Book of Air and Shadows
  Author: Gruber, Michael
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780060874469 Date: 2007
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Hidden in the binding of a charred and ruined book is a cache of letters. They are encrypted and the key to unlocking the mysterious code has been lost for 400 years. If the letters are read, they will lead to one of the most valuable items in the history of the world.
  Updated 1.27.07
• The Forgery of Venus
  Author: Gruber, Michael
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780060874483 Date: 2008
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  Gruber creates a fascinating world of secrets, genius, and conspiracies and combines it with brilliant storytelling, complex characterizations, and sterling prose to produce this spellbinding novel.
  Suggested Reading: Art | Forgery of Venus
  Updated 2.26.08
  
• Hardscrabble Road
  Author: Haddam, Jane
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312353731  Date: 2006
  Kirkus PW LJ
  When a right-wing radio show host is arrested for illegal possession of prescription drugs, the incident sets into motion a deadly series of events. Leading the investigation is Gregor Demarkian, a retired FBI agent hired to stop a killer from striking again.
  Updated 5.4.06
• Cheating at Solitaire
  Author: Haddam, Jane
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312343088 Date: 2008
  PW Kirkus Booklist LJ
  Former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, fleeing from his own wedding preparations, is hired to review a case--one that he finds has little evidence and twisted by an out-of-control media--in what may be the most compelling case of his entire career.
  Updated 3.3.08
  
• The Art of Breaking Glass
  Author: Hall, Matthew
  Publisher: Little, Brown List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 0316339245 Date: 1997
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  A breakthrough thriller starring a charismatic urban vigilante and the woman who inspires his greatest, most shattering revenge scheme ever, The Art of Breaking Glass plunges readers into a cunning game of cat and mouse that keeps them guessing right up to the last page. "A totally unique, action-packed, extremely well-written humdinger of a thriller" - James Patterson.
• Gentlemen and Players
  Author: Harris, Joanne
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060559144 Date: 2006
  PW Booklist LJ
  Friendship, murder, revenge, and class conflict collide in an upper-crust English school. As a new term gets under way, a number of annoying incidents befall students and faculty, escalating to murder.
  Suggested Reading: School Stars
  Updated 12.27.05
• The King of Lies
  Author: Hart, John
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 031234161x Date: 2006
  PW Booklist LJ
  When Work Pickens finds his father murdered, the investigation pushes a repressed family history to the surface, and he sees his own carefully constructed facade begin to crack.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 3.20.06
• Last Rites
  Author: Harvey, John
  Publisher: Henry Holt Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0805041508 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  When a convicted murderer out on compassionate leave turns up at his mother's funeral and then abruptly disappears, the local cops don't have much time to spare for a manhunt. This is Resnick's final case - and it's Resnick at his finest.
• Lucky You
  Author: Hiaasen, Carl
  Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679454446 Date: 1997
  PW Kirkus LJ
  The newest- and funniest- novel yet by the bestselling author of Strip Tease and Stormy Weather. When JoLayne Lucks, the most recent winner of the Florida state lottery, has her ticket stolen by two would be "domestic terrorists", she enlists the help of Tom Krome- a journalist stretched thin by divorce, lite news, and a fool of a managing editor- in a chase that leads them to a deliriously righteous outcome - the inspired hallmark of Carl Hiaasen.
• On Beulah Height
  Author: Hill, Reginald
  Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385332793 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  PW's Best 98 Books selection
  Inspector Andy Dalziel finds himself reliving an event that happened 15 years before, when a little girl goes missing and Dalziel and Peter Pascoe must delve into the past in search of answers that threaten to bring more pain.
• The Wailing Wind
  Author: Hillerman, Tony
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060194448 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Bestselling author Hillerman brings back Chee and Leaphorn in a twisting tale of murder, past and present. Legends of the Navajo Reservation's lost gold mines are an important part of the plot, but the tale also turns on obsessive love and memories of a missing woman's voice wailing in the darkness.
  Updated 4/12/02
• Holmes on the Range
  Author: Hockensmith, Steve
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312347804 Date: 2006
  LJ PW Booklist
  Somewhere due west of Deadwood, a pair of unlikely cowboy sleuths investigate murder just like their hero, Sherlock Holmes, who they come to know by scouring "Harper's Weekly" for the detective stories.
  Suggested Reading: Cross Genres | Elementary Stars
  Updated 2.21.06
• Where the Truth Lies
  Author: Holmes, Rupert
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 SBN: 0679452206 Date: 2003
  Kirkus LJ Booklist
  " Rupert Holmes seats you gently next to an irresistible narrator only to entangle you completely in her twisted, dark, exhilarating troubles. The ensuing thriller crosses a Dickensian world of deceit and destiny with the slipping glory of 1970s New York and Los Angeles. Every character is so alive with delicious secrets that you'll never suspect Where the Truth Lies." --Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 6.25.03
• Due Preparations for the Plague
  Author: Hospital, Janette Turner
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 039305764x Date: 2003
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Hospital's electrifying new novel is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, of sexual and political passions, and of individual and national complicities in the age of terrorism. She probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering and the painful meaning of survival.
  Updated 5.29.03
• Hot Springs
  Author: Hunter, Stephen
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 068486360x Date: 2000
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  The undisputed master of the tough thriller delivers a masterpiece of crime fiction. In the summer of 1946 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a lawman is called upon by the district attorney to help bring down the mob. As casino raids erupt into nerve-shattering combat, the body count mounts - along with the suspense.
  
• Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel
  Author: Hunter, Stephen
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743238087 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  It is 1953 and Cuba is at its lush, tropical, and glamorous best. Only one small problem threatens this situation--the rise of a daring revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Now, legendary sniper Earl Swagger has been called in by the CIA to take him out.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 8.13.03
• Monstrum
  Author: James, Donald
  Publisher: Villard List Price: $24.95 ISBN: 0679457704 Date: 1997
  PW Booklist LJ
  Gorky Park visits Fatherland in this thrilling suspense novel, starring a Moscow homicide detective and set in war-torn Russia in the year 2015. Nationalist forces in the new Russia have finally defeated the Anarchist rebels in an enervating campaign. As the nation attempts to rebuilt, a serial killer implants a fear worse than bombings and firefights in the citizens, and Provencial Detective Constantine Vadim is summoned to Moscow to crack the case.
• Looking Good Dead
  Author: James, Peter
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25.95/14.95 ISBN: 9780786718801/9780786716425 Date: 2007
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Tom Bryce did what any decent person would do. But within hours of picking up the CD that had been left behind on the train seat next to him, and attempting to return it to its owner, he is the sole witness to a vicious murder. Then his young family are threatened with their lives if he goes to the police. But supported by his wife, Kellie, he bravely makes a statemenet to the murder enquiry team headed by Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a man with demons of his own to contend with. And from that moment, the killing of the Bryce family becomes a mere formality — and a grisly attraction. Kellie and Tom's deaths have already been posted on the internet; you can log on and see them on a website. They are looking good dead.
  Updated 1.16.06
• Vengeance: Lew Fonesca
  Author: Kaminsky, Stuart M.
  Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312869274 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  A process server quits his job and flees town to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. When his car breaks down in Florida, Lew Fonesca settles there and is hired find a man's missing wife.
• Los Alamos
  Author: Kanon, Joseph
  Publisher: Broadway List Price: $25 ISBN: 0553062247 Date: 1997
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Kanon recreates the most compelling real-life drama of this century - an audacious flight of the imagination which interweaves real and fictional figures to create a "what- if" novel of historical intrigue. Spring 1945: As work on the first atom bomb nears completion in New Mexico, Manhattan Project security officer Karl Bruner is found murdered. Is Bruner's killing a result of a violent sexual encounter, or part of a plot that threatens to jeopardize the project itself?
• Billy Straight
  Author: Kellerman, Jonathan
  Publisher: Random House Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0679459596 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW Library Journal
  A Dickensian tale of innocence, urban depravity, and one boy's efforts to maintain his own code of ethics in the face of danger, by the author of Survival of the Fittest. Twelve-year-old Billy has fled the abuse of his life at home and is fighting to survive on L.A.'s meanest streets. After he witnesses a brutal murder, Billy becomes the center of terrifying attention from the media, from violent bounty hunters, and from the murderer himself.
• The Death Collectors
  Author: Kerley, Jack
  Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525948775 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW LJ
  The Hundredth Man was universally praised as the debut novel in a series to watch. Now, author Jack Kerley returns with The Death Collectors, which will establish him as one of the most innovative thriller writers today.
  Updated 6.29.05
• Dark Matter
  Author: Kerr, Philip
  Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 0609609815 Date: 2002
  PW Booklist Library Journal
  As Dark Matter opens in 1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London--not as a prisoner, but as assistant to Sir Isaac Newton, renowned scientist. Newton has been appointed by the King to uncover a ring of counterfeiters. Ellis lacks Sir Isaac's erudite mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves an invaluable sidekick to the great scientist/sleuth.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mysteries
  Updated 8.16.02
• Esau
  Author: Kerr, Philip
  Publisher: Holt List Price: $22.50 ISBN:0805051759 Date: 1997
  LJ Booklist PW
  In his most dazzling thriller to date, "England's answer to Michael Crichton" (The Financial Times) spins a tale of high adventure in which science, politics, and human frailty combine to take readers on a stunning foray into the nature of man. In a lab on a Berkeley campus, a paleoanthropologist learns that what she took to be a fossil of the first order in fact the scientific discovery of a lifetime.
  
• Keeping Watch
  Author: King, Laurie R.
  Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553801910 Date: 2003
  Kirkus LJ Booklist PW
  After years of rescuing children and on the brink of retirement, Alan Carmichael decides to rescue one last teenager from an abusive parent. But, once the boy is safely hidden, Carmichael begins to doubt his decision to intervene: Has he turned a killer free to kill again?
  Updated 2.4.03
• Locked Rooms
  Author: King, Laurie R.
  Publisher: Bantam $ 24 ISBN: 055380197x Date: 2005
  PW Kirkus LJ Booklist
  As Mary Russell and her husband, the eminent Sherlock Holmes, attempt to settle their affairs in the City by the Bay, Mary's past isn't the only thing that catches up with them: a mysterious stranger is waiting for the pair, and may be the only one who holds the key to the locked rooms that have been haunting Mary's dreams.
  Suggested Reading: Elementary Stars
  Updated 5.9.05
• Dating Dead Men
  Author: Kozak, Harley Jane
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385510187 Date: 2004
  LJ Kirkus PW
  Kozak's debut novel is a smart, funny, fast-paced mystery in the tradition of Janet Evanovich featuring greeting card artist and small business owner Wollie Shelley, a woman who's looking for love--and job satisfaction--in all the wrong places when she literally stumbles across a murder that irrevocably changes her life (in some ways, for the better).
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | If You Like Janet Evanovich
  Updated 12.8.03
• Dating Is Murder
  Author: Kozak, Harley Jane
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385510349 Date: 2005
  LJ Kirkus PW
  With Dating Is Murder, Kozak delivers another sparkling treasure, a laugh-out-loud funny, literate mystery for readers of Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton, and for Kozak's own growing legion of fans.
  Suggested Reading: If You Like Janet Evanovich
  Updated 2.7.05
• The Grand Complication
  Author: Kurzweil, Allen
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786866039 Date: 2001
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The anticipated new novel from the author of A Case of Curiosities, Kurzweil returns with another work narrated by Alexander Short, a reference librarian who takes on an unusual research assignment when he feels his passions--both professional and personal--waning.
  
• The Dead Sit Round in a Ring
  Author: Lawrence, David
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312327102 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  "Four people sitting in a ring. Two men and two women. All of them dead." Thus begins a case that will take DS Stella Mooney from the fabulous flats of Notting Hill to the decidedly tougher side of town. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 5.7.04
• Mystic River
  Author: Lehane, Dennis
  Publisher: Morrow $ 22 ISBN: 0688163165 Date: 2001
  Booklist PW LJ
  When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found dead, his childhood friend Sean Devine is assigned the case. Sean's personal life begins to unravel as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. His quest also leads him on a collision course with Marcus--a man with his own dark past--and David Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade.
  
• Shutter Island
  Author: Lehane, Dennis
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0688163173 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
  The New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and master of the new noir returns with a scorching psychological thriller set in 1954 at Ashcliffe Hospital--a federal institution for the criminally insane. As a storm threatens to strand U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule, they stumble into an evil darker than any nightmare.
  Updated 4.29.03
• Blood From a Stone: Commissario Guido Brunetti
  Author: Leon, Donna
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 0871138875 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
  Updated 3.21.05
• Cuba Libre
  Author: Leonard, Elmore
  Publisher: Delacorte Price: $ 28.95 ISBN: 0385323832 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus LJ
  Set in Cuba just before the Spanish-American War, Elmore Leonard's latest novel is filled with high adventure, history, romance, and, of course, nefarious undertakings. Circumstance, nonchalance, and a remarkable streak of bad luck have turned Ben Tyler from cowboy to bank robber to convict, without ever changing his genial disposition. On yet another crooked attempt to return to the straight and narrow, Tyler finds himself in Havana agreeing to complete a series of deals that will completely turn his luck around.
• Tishomingo Blues
  Author: Leonard, Elmore
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060008725 Date: 2002
  Booklist PW LJ
  Girls love Dennis Lenahan, he's cool and he's a daredevil. Dennis is performing in a Tunica, Mississippi casino, when he witnesses a murder and the local Dixie Mafia warns him, "You talk, you're dead." Along comes Robert Taylor, a black gangsta from Detroit. Robert has his own agenda for taking on the Cornbread Cosa Nostra and wants Dennis to come in with him. Readers will wonder: is Dennis hooked up with the bad guys or the really bad guys?
  Updated 1/15/02
• Motherless Brooklyn
  Author: Lethem, Jonathan
  Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385491832 Date: 1999
  Booklist Library Journal PW Kirkus
  Lethem fulfills the promise of his earlier, critically acclaimed novels with the gritty and uproarious tale of a Brooklyn P.I. with problems: a dead boss, woman trouble, and an uncontrollable case of Tourette's syndrome.
• Darkly Dreaming Dexter
  Author: Lindsey, Jeff
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 038551123x Date: 2004
  PW Booklist LJ
  Darkly Dreaming Dexter is a new kind of mystery novel starring a lovable serial killer, one Dexter Morgan, who only kills bad people and who cringes at the sight of blood.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts | Serial Killers
  Updated 6.17.04
• Conspiracy of Paper
  Author: Liss, David
  Publisher: Random $ 25 ISBN: 0375502920 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
  "In A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss has woven a tale of 18th-century finance, murder, and religion that is a remarkable debut and a thoroughly satisfying novel." - Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha.
• Company: A Novel of the CIA 1951-1991
  Author: Littell, Robert
  Publisher: Overlook $ 27.95 ISBN: 1585671975 Date: 2002
  Library Journal Kirkus Booklist
  The magnum opus of acclaimed espionage novelist Littell is a mesmerizing, dazzlingly plotted epic that tells the life and death struggle of two generations of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 2/6/02
• Alice in Jeopardy
  Author: McBain, Ed
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743262506 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Since her husband's tragic death, Alice Glendenning has struggled to maintain a normal life. Things turn nightmarish when her children disappear, and the ransom demand is identical to the amount due from insurance after her husband's death.
  Updated 11.2.04
• Cold Granite
  Author: MacBride, Stuart
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031233995x Date: 2005
  Booklist PW LJ
  DCI Logan McRac returns to his job in Aberdeen CID after recuperating from a gunshot wound and finds himself assigned to a brutal serial killer case.
  Sugg Suggested Reading: Scottish Crime Fiction Stars |Debuts
  Updated 6.15.05
• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
  Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375422714 Date: 2005
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  This time around, the charming and ever-resourceful Precious Ramotswe finds herself overly beset by problems. She is busier than usual at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, when a strange intruder in her house forces her to confront a painful secret from her past.
  Updated 3.10.05
• Old Boys
  Author: McCarry, Charles
  Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585675458 Date: 2004
  LJ Kirkus Booklist
  When crack intelligence agent Paul Christopher disappears, his ex-agent cousin enlists the support of four other retired colleagues to find him. Harassed by American intelligence and hunted by terrorists, they travel the globe in search of the unspeakably dangerous truth.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 5.7.04
• Heart of the Hunter
  Author: Meyer, Deon
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316935492 Date: 2004
  LJ Kirkus Booklist
  In his stunning American debut, the South African thriller writer delivers the story of a kidnapping and of a man refusing to reclaim the ruthless methods he mastered in the darkest days of South Africa's battle for survival.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 7.6.04
• Dead at Daybreak
  Author: Meyer, Deon
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316000124 Date: 2005
  LJ Booklist PW
  The newest headspinning thriller from the breakout South African crime writer, author of Heart of the Hunter, is the story of an ex-cop who has seven days to solve a seemingly unsolvable crime--the answer to which lies in his own dark past.
  Suggested Reading: South Africa
  Updated 7.11.05
• Walkin' the Dog
  Author: Mosley, Walter
  Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316966207 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  Mosley returns with a character his fans know and love - Socrates Fortlow, the widely praised hero of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, starring in a brilliant new book that explores life outside the law in modern-day Los Angeles.
• Little Scarlet: Easy Rawlins
  Author: Mosley, Walter
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN:0316073032 Date: 2004
  Booklist PW Kirkus LJ
  An irresistible story of love and death, this latest Easy Rawlins mystery takes place during the devastating 1965 Watts riots. Easy's hunt for a killer reveals a new city emerging from the ashes--and a new life for Easy and his friends.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 6.1.04
• Days of Rage: Smokey Dalton
  Author: Nelscott, Kris
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312325290 Date: 2006
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Updated 3.16.06
• Shell Game: A Mallory Novel
  Author: O'Connell, Carol
  Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399144951 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW Library Journal
  The recreation of a legendary magic trick goes horribly awry on live television - a terrible accident, everyone agrees. But two people know otherwise. One is an aged magician in a private hospital and the other is streetwise Kathy Mallory, now a New York City policewoman.
• The Unburied
  Author: Palliser, Charles
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0374280355 Date: 1999
  Booklist Library Journal PW
  Three separate tales are interwoven in this novel about Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, who is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend. Doubly distracted, he becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follows his arrival.
• Fire Sale
  Author: Paretsky, Sara
  Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399152792 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  Warshawski takes over coaching duties of the girls' basketball team at her former high school. Shortly after the mother of one of the players voices concerns about sabotage in the manufacturing plant where she works, a deadly explosion occurs. As Warshawski investigates, she must track down a particularly cruel murderer.
  Suggested Reading: Private Investigators
  Updated 6.20.05
• The Fallen
  Author: Parker, T. Jefferson
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060562382 Date: 2006
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The award-winning author of California Girl plumbs the depths of the human heart in this electrifying new novel of suspense. "Some of the finest writing you will ever read."--"Chicago Sun Times."
  Updated 2.2.06
• Stone Cold
  Author: Parker, Robert B.
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399150870 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Fans have embraced each amazing new creation to spring from the fertile imagination of Parker. In Stone Cold, Jesse Stone has a problem. Actually, several problems: dead bodies turning up--and no clues.
  Updated 9.25.03
• The Fallen
  Author: Parker, T. Jefferson
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060562382 Date: 2006
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The award-winning author of California Girl plumbs the depths of the human heart in this electrifying new novel of suspense. "Some of the finest writing you will ever read."--"Chicago Sun Times."
  Updated 2.2.06
• Violence, Nudity, Adult Content
  Author: Passaro, Vince
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 068485726x Date: 2002
  Kirkus Library Journal Booklist
  With Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, the noted essayist and short story writer Vince Passaro offers a revelatory first novel of crime, sexual damage, and personal redemption--in a story that combines the grit of a Scott Turow courtroom thriller with an astute vision of a crumbling marriage, worthy of Russell Banks or Lorrie Moore. With present-day New York City teeming darkly as a backdrop to the relentless action, this thriller fires on all cylinders as a compelling literary page-turner.
  Updated 1/2/02
• The Skull Mantra
  Author: Pattison, Eliot
  Publisher: Minotaur List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312204787 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  When a headless corpse is found on a windy Tibetan mountainside, the astonishing early evidence shows that the killer is a mythical Buddhist demon.
• Protect and Defend
  Author: Patterson, Richard North
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679450440 Date: 2001
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  In a compelling new novel, Patterson makes a major departure that confirms his place among the most important writers at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court, but the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. What results is the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.
  Suggested Reading: Legal Stars | Political Fiction
  
• Hard Time: V.I. Warshawski
  Author: Paretsky, Sara
  Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385313632 Date: 1999
  Booklist Kirkus PW
  
• The Dream of Scipio
  Author: Pears, Iain
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 27.95 ISBN: 157322202x Date: 2002
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  From the author of An Instance of the Fingerpost comes this anticipated novel that is constructed around Provence in three different centuries, and each has at its heart a love story. Expertly imagined and perfectly realized, The Dream of Scipio is a feat of storytelling.
  Updated 5/23/02
• An Instance of the Fingerpost
  Author: Pears, Iain
  Publisher: Riverhead Price: $ 27 ISBN: 1573220825 Date: 1998
  PW Booklist Kirkus LJ
  PW's Best 98 Books selection
  Deserving comparison to the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, Iain Pear's stunning new novel is an ingenious tour de force. In England in the 1660's, a young woman is accused of the murder of a New College fellow, who has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. Four extremely diverse witnesses give their accounts of the events - but only one reveals the extraordinary truth.
• Right as Rain
  Author: Pelecanos, George
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316695262 Date: 2001
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Derek Strange, a private detective, is hired to clear the lingering doubts about a young black police officer killed in the line of duty. After Strange interviews Terry Quinn, the officer who pulled the trigger, Quinn joins the investigation and helps seek answers in the darkest sectors of Washington, D.C., where racism and ruthless capitalism create a lawless world.
  
• The Night Gardener
  Author: Pelecanos, George P.
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 0316156507 Date: 2006
  Booklist LJ PW
  It's been 20 years since three teenagers were killed and their abused bodies were left in public parks. The case was never solved, but the two lead detectives on the case have pursued very different paths during the last two decades.
  Updated 6.20.06
• Still Life
  Author: Penny, Louise
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312352557 Date: 2006
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  A Debut Dagger honor book in the U.K., this work introduces an engaging series hero in Inspector Armand Gamache who commands his forces with integrity and quiet courage. Locals are convinced a murder was no more than a tragic hunting accident, but Gamache uncovers something more sinister.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 5.10.06
• The Cruelest Month: Three Pines
  Author: Penny, Louise
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312352578 Date: 2008
  Kirkus LJ PW
  The cozy, seemingly idyllic town of Three Pines is thrown into chaos when an impromptu sance turns deadly. In this complex, accomplished mystery, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache must confront a myriad of baffling questions surrounding the case.
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• Freedomland
  Author: Price, Richard
  Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0767900243 Date: 1998
  PW Booklist LJ
  PW's Best 98 Books selection
  The bestselling author of Clockers tells his most compelling and emotionally charged story yet, in the tale of an injured woman who claims that a carjacker has kidnapped her son, and the shrewd police officer and ambitious young reporter who smell a hoax.
• Lush Life
  Author: Price, Richard
  Publisher: FSG $ 26 ISBN: 9780374299255 Date: 2008
  Booklist Kirkus LJ LJ
  In Lush Life, Price tears the shiny veneer off the "new" New York to show the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour, in this novel that reads like a movie in prose" ("New York Times").
  Updated 3.3.08
  
• Lost Girls
  Author: Pyper, Andrew
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 23.95 ISBN: 038533446x Date: 2000
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  This literary gothic debut, a #1 "National Post" bestseller in Canada, is a chilling tale in which one mystery fractures into many as a young defense attorney, assigned to his first murder trial, returns to the haunted town of his past.
  
• The Falls
  Author: Rankin, Ian
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312206100 Date: 2001
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  A student is missing, a coffin is found, and John Rebus must match wits with a fiendishly clever killer as ancient and modern evils are brought together in contemporary Scotland.
  
• Set In Darkness
  Author: Rankin, Ian
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312206097 Date: 2000
  Booklist Kirkus Library Journal PW
  As the first Scottish Parliament in 300 years prepares to convene, Queensbury House is in the middle of John Rebus's turf, keeping him busy with ceremonial tasks. But when a long dead body is found in the fireplace, and two more deaths occur, Rebus is led to a confrontation with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals.
  
• Field of Darkness
  Author: Read, Cornelia
  Publisher: Mysterious $ 22.95 ISBN: 089296023x Date: 2006
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  A tough-talking, shotgun-toting debutante gets in over her head investigatinga pair of cold case murders in this assured, thrilling first novel.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 3.20.06
• Deja Dead
  Author: Reichs, Kathy
  Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0684841177 Date: 1997
  PW LJ Kirkus
  A dazzling debut, this forensic thriller was the toast of the Frankfurt Book Fair, leading Variety to hail Reichs as " the next Patricia Cornwell". Tempe Brennan had planned a quiet weekend, but duty calls. The chopped-up body parts she is faced with remind Tempe of the unsolved case of the torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Tempe suspects a connection between the two and must use all her forensic and investigative skills to convince police.
• Cold Is the Grave
  Author: Robinson, Peter
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 0380978083 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Booklist Library Journal
  After trying to destroy the career of Inspector Alan Banks, Chief Constable Riddle now turns to Banks for help when pictures of Riddle's missing daughter turn up on a pornographic web site. The search for the missing young woman draws Banks deep into London's sordid underbelly of drugs, crime, and sex.
  
• In a Dry Season
  Author: Robinson, Peter
  Publisher: Twilight Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0380975815 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  A playful child wandering in remains unearths a human skeleton that forensics determine to belong to a woman who appears to have been murdered and hidden beneath the floor of an old building.
• The Suspect
  Author: Robotham, Michael
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385508611 Date: 2005
  LJ Kirkus Booklist
  Psychiatrist Joe O'Loughlin's comfortable life begins to crumble when he is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and becomes a suspect in a brutal murder case.
  Updated 11.29.04
• Play Dead
  Author: Rosenfelt, David
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780446582414 Date: 2007
  PWLJBooklist
  Edgar Award finalist and "Today" show Book Club pick author David Rosenfelt spins a tale of crime and courtroom theatrics where the only witness to a high-profile murder is a golden retriever.
  Updated 4.17.07
• Reflecting the Sky
  Author: Rozan, S.J.
  Publisher: Minotaur $24.95 ISBN: 0312244274 Date: 2001
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Lydia Chin . . . is hired by Grandfather Gao, one of the most respected figures in New York City's Chinatown, for what seems to be a simple task. Lydia, along with her professional partner Bill Smith, is to fly to Hong Kong to deliver a family heirloom to the young grandson of a recently deceased colleague. They arrive in Hong Kong safely, but before they can deliver the heirloom, the grandson is kidnapped and two separate ransom demands are made. While the family of the kidnapped boy tries to freeze them out, Lydia and Bill must quickly learn their way around a place where the rules are different, the stakes are high, and the cost of failure is too dire to imagine. - from the jacket copy.
• A Bitter Feast
  Author: Rozan, S.J.
  Publisher: St. Martins List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312192592 Date: 1998
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Chinese-American P.I. Lydia Chin has lived in New York City's Chinatown all her life. But even to her, the complex interactions of this city-within-a-city are often elusive. A simple missing persons case leads Lydia and her sometime-partner Bill into a deadly conflict between powerful rivals, the Feds, and the NYPD. This is a brilliant thriller by one of the genre's emerging masters. From the St. Martin's catalog.
• Cripple Creek
  Author: Sallis, James
  Publisher: Walker $ 23 ISBN: 0802733824 Date: 2006
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  In the sequel to Cypress Grove, deputy sheriff Turner returns to Memphis, the city that formed him, and confronts his ghosts and sets in motion a tempest that threatens to destroy his newfound sanctuary.
  Updated 3.6.06
• Salt River
  Author: Sallis, James
  Publisher: Walker $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780802716170 Date: 2008
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The poignant and surprising new thriller by one of Americas most acclaimed writers follows ex-cop, ex-con, and war veteran John Turner as he goes in search of a truth hes not sure he can live with.
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• Judgement of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome
  Author: Saylor, Steven
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312271190 Date: 2004
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  In the late days of the Roman civil war, Gordianus the Finder is caught in Egypt in the midst of the last struggle between Pompeii and Julius Caesar, and between Ptolemy and Cleopatra while he searches for his missing wife.
  Updated 5.10.04
• Reservation Road
  Author: Schwartz, John Burnham
  Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375402632 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  A compulsively readable novel of feeling and suspense about two men and their families, and the hit-and-run death of a young boy. "A nonstop read about people locked in a terrible embrace" (Ward Just), Reservation Road is powerful, wrenching, impossible to put down.
• Mistaken Identity
  Author: Scottoline, Lisa
  Publisher: HarperCollins Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060187476 Date: 1999
  PW Kirkus Library Journal
  An accused murderer is a dead ringer for the attorney hired to protect her - claiming to be her long-lost twin sister. From that startling opening, Mistaken Identity sweeps up readers on a roller coaster rider of breathless suspense, the kind only bestselling author Lisa Scottoline can deliver.
  Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
• The Sexual Occupation of Japan
  Author: Setlowe, Richard
  Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 006018934 Date: 1999
  Kirkus PW Library Journal
  A smart, riveting thriller and poignant love story set amid Japan's volcanic economy and political intrigues. An American lawyer fights to keep a secret, multibillion dollar deal - and himself - alive in a country haunted by the past.
• The Terror
  Author: Simmons, Dan
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780316017442 Date: 2007
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Based on the true story of two ice ships that disappeared in the Arctic Circle during the Sir John Franklin Expedition in 1845.
  Updated 11.16.06
• Judas Horse: Ana Grey
  Author: Smith, April
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400042050 Date: 2008
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  Maverick FBI Special Agent Ana Grey goes undercover to infiltrate the volatile core of a domestic terrorist cell, where she must negotiate a minefield of loyalty and betrayal under constant threat of discovery.
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• December 6
  Author: Smith, Martin Cruz
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0684872536
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  As seen through the eyes of an American con man living in Tokyo days before the Japanese attack, December 6 is Smith at the top of his game. The #1 bestselling author of Gorky Park, Red Square, Havana Bay and Rose returns with his most audaciously original and brilliant novel yet.
  Suggested Reading: World War Fiction | Historical Mysteries
  Updated 8.13.02
• Havana Bay
  Author: Smith, Martin Cruz
  Publisher: Random Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679426620 Date: 1999
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  Bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith has found a way to exploit the last cutting edge of the Cold War. When the body of a Russian embassy official is found floating in Havana Bay, Arkady Renko, the memorable detective from Gorky Park is sent to identify it.
• Spares
  Author: Smith, Michael Marshall
  Publisher: Bantam List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 055310604x Date: 1997
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  For the last five years, Jack Randall has been hiding out on a Spares Farm, working at the only job still available to him: guarding people who have never seen the outside world - people who can't even spell the word "escape". Now Jack is on the run with seven of the Farm's inmates - and the people who own them will do anything to get them back - anything.
• Child 44
  Author: Smith, Tom Rob
  Publisher: Grand Central $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780446402385 Date: 2008
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  In Stalin's Soviet Union, it's a crime against the State to suggest that a murderer--much less a serial killer--is in the midst of the populace. Exiled from his home, a war hero must find and stop a criminal that the State won't admit even exists.
  Updated 3.3.08
  
• All Mortal Flesh
  Author: Spencer-Fleming, Julia
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312312644   Date: 2006
  LJ PW Kirkus
  One horrible murder. Two people destined for love or tragedy. Emotions explode in Spencer-Fleming's most accomplished mystery yet.
  Updated 8.16.06
• The Confession
  Author: Steinhauer, Olen
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312303289 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  Eastern Europe 1956: Comrade Inpector Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide detective and aspiring writer, is watching his life unravel. Estranged from his wife, frustrated by writer's block and tracking a murderer through the shadowy capital. By the author of Bridge of Sighs.
  Suggested Reading: European Crime Fiction
  Updated 1.10.04
• Vienna Blood
  Author: Tallis, Frank
  Publisher: Random $ 15 ISBN: 9780812977769 Date: 2008
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  In 1902, a serial killer in Vienna embarks upon a bizarre campaign of murder. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt summons Dr. Max Liebermann to assist him with the case. The investigation draws them into the sphere of Viennas secret societies, in this second novel to feature literature's first psychoanalytic detective.
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• The Little Friend
  Author: Tartt, Donna
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0679439382 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
  The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of The Secret History--"an elegant, edifying work of art" (Entertainment Weekly). Even more transfixingly suspenseful than its predecessor, this is a dark novel of lost childhood, rich in moral paradox, as a 12-year-old Mississippi girl sets out to find her brother's murderer.
  Updated 10.16.02
• Reversible Errors
  Author: Turow, Scott
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 28 ISBN: 0374281602 Date: 2002
  Kirkus PW LJ
  The bestselling author of Burden of Proof returns with a supercharged, exquisitely suspenseful novel about a vicious triple murder and the man condemned to die for it. Further complicating the situation is that the judge who originally found the man guilty is only recently out of prison herself, having served time for taking bribes.
  Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
  Updated 9.23.02
• Ordinary Heroes
  Author: Turow, Scott
  Publisher: FSG $ 26 ISBN: 0374184216 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW LJ
  In reconstructing the terrible events and agonizing choices his father faced on the battlefield during World War II, in the courtroom, and in love, Stewart Dubinsky gains a closer understanding of his past, of his father's character, and of the brutal nature of war itself.
  Suggested Reading: Legal Stars | Veterans
  Updated 10.11.05
• The Fault Tree
  Author: Ure, Louise
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312375850 Date: 2008
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  Arizona auto mechanic Cadence Moran is no stranger to darkness. She was blinded in a horrific car accident eight years ago that also took the life of her three-year old niece. She knows she was only partially to blame, but that doesn't make the loss any easier to bear. She's learned to get by, but there are still painful memories. When she is almost run down by a speeding car on the way home from work, Cadence at first thinks that she is the victim of road rage or a bad driver. But that's not the case. In fact, she is the only witness to the murder of her elderly neighbor, and now the killer believes that she's seen the getaway car.Louise Ure paints the glare of a Southwestern summer with the brush of a blind woman's darkness in this novel of jeopardy and courage ... and the fine line between them--as Cadence fights to stop a killer she can't see. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 1.30.08
  
• Shape of Snakes
  Author: Walters, Minette
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399147330 Date: 2001
  Kirkus LJ PW
  This "New York Times" Notable Book begins on a rainy winter night. It takes