This novel is the second in a new series featuring Benedict ["Ben"] Devlin, an Inspector in the Guards, or An Garda, in Lifford, Donegal, Ireland. [The title derives from the name of the street along which, centuries ago, the condemned were led en route to their death.] As the book opens, Devlin meets with a man from the North country, James Kerr, just released after 8 years of incarceration, his mandate being to make sure Kerr crosses back over the border to his home territory, thereby ensuring no further criminal activity by him on Devlin’s patch. But Kerr, it seems, has lately found God, and first needs to complete a ‘mission’ in keeping with that spiritual awakening.

A more challenging job soon awaits Devlin, as the body of a young girl is discovered, savagely beaten to death. When that murder is followed by the severe beating of another girl, this one only sixteen years old, the investigation intensifies. The only problem is that no one can come up with anything more than a vague description of the man responsible.

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Addiction is the theme of this series. To begin with, the three protagonists are recovering from alcoholism or drug abuse. But more important, they are addicted to detecting. The author, a therapist specializing in addiction and co-dependency, uses her professional background abundantly in this series, emphasizing AA principles and the trials of a recovering person.

The plot of this, the second installment featuring recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends: Jimmy, a computer genius, and Barbara, an addictions counselor and world-class codependent, begins with a telephone call from Barbara’s sponsor Luz, who becomes suspect #1 when her abusive boyfriend, Frankie, just out of rehab and known to be a drug dealer, is found stabbed to death in his Spanish Harlem apartment. Frankie had a pregnant wife with two kids back in Brooklyn, giving the author the chance to use her knowledge of that borough and other parts of New York City as background.

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This follow-up to the well-received “The Tourist” finds Milo Weaver at the end of his tether with absolutely nothing to lose. He is induced to return to his old life as a “tourist” [a secret CIA subdivision] but first has to prove his “loyalty” to the organization. This is accomplished by a series of assignments, many of which are unpalatable to him.

Milo performs all but the last job, that of disposing of a young girl, instead plotting to save her life by arranging to hide her only to see her escape and be killed. The action then begins, as Milo becomes entwined in all kinds of intrigues, including international spy activities, a possible mole in the tourist organization, sex crimes and whatever else the plot can conjure.

All this makes for an exciting adventure, as Milo weighs the good and bad, plotting to make everything come out to his satisfaction.

Dope Thief by Dennis Tafoya was one of the best debut crime novels last year. Dark and unflinching but not afraid to deal in emotions and intimacy if not hope and redemption. The follow up this year is The Wolves of Fairmount Park. Based off of Tafoya’s refusal to pigeonhole Dope Thief into any one category it was hard to know what to expect from Wolves.

The book opens with two bodies and the feeling that we are firmly in mystery territory. As the identities of these boys are discovered and the people in their lives come on to the page and stay the book casts a wider net and sits more comfortably in crime territory because the solution of the crime isn’t the thing here but instead how all of these people interact and deal with the tragedy. The cast is a large one and Tafoya settles on four main POV characters to anchor the swirling narrative.

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Expiration Date may just be the best book that Duane Swierczynski has written yet. (I only say may because I think that The Wheelman might just be my favorite.) In it he has rendered his strengths in greater clarity: The pace flies; The plot grows increasingly complex but never gets unruly. Swierczynski regularly makes pace and plot his bitches and in Expiration Date he further bends them over to his will.

If Duane’s books have a weakness though its that his characters can, at times, be a little thin. They serve the plot well and their motivations are clearly stated but the reader never gets fully invested in them. At the same time though, to keep things in proper perspective, the reader largely doesn’t care, or in most cases even notice, any potential deficiency because those strengths so far outweigh them. Swierczynski’s books do one thing right for the most part. They kick your ass and entertain the hell out of you.

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It is strange to think of Iceland as a multi-cultural society, but the fact that it has a fairly substantial immigrant population provides the background for this murder-mystery. A 10-year-old half-Thai boy is found stabbed to death on a path to his home on the way back from school. And Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson has to investigate not only the murder but also the possibility of a hate crime.

In this latest novel featuring the Icelandic Inspector, he also confronts his own past: the estrangement of his daughter and son and the haunting ghost of his brother’s tragic death when they were both young boys lost in a snow storm.

Indridason is the author of four previous novels, including the Gold Dagger award-winning Jar City. This latest effort merely reinforces his reputation as being among the best of the contemporary Scandinavian crime novelists. He addresses not only the traditional crime-mystery themes, but also present-day social matters as well. The writing is beautifully simple, but poignant and elegant. Highly recommended.

The little English village on the Devon/Dorset border where Dr. Clare Benning lives and works as a wildlife veterinary surgeon is suddenly overrun with snakes, or so it seems. First a man is brought to hospital suffering from snakebite poisoning; then a snake appears in the crib of an infant. Other incidents are found to have occurred, all within a few days. Clare thinks: “People didn’t die of snake bite in quiet English villages. They didn’t wake up to find poisonous tropical snakes in their houses. And they certainly didn’t come back from the dead.” Snakes happen to be Clare’s area of expertise, and she is called upon for assistance, and her “quiet, orderly life [goes into] meltdown.”

Somewhat dysfunctional [to call her existence solitary would be a gross understatement, and all made clear to the reader in due course], one could almost say Clare identified with the snakes, saying of herself: “I’d had it with human contact. I was slithering away, through the undergrowth, away from the noise and vibrations, seeking solitude and safety.” Unexpectedly, there is a romantic connection hinted at, the object of which says to Clare: “You really don’t do the human race, do you? . . . You should give your own species a chance, you know.” And then there is the possible presence of ghosts; or rather, one ghost. Rather than testing my suspension of disbelief, as I expected, this element of the book only intrigued me further. A malevolence is being visited upon the villagers, but why? The author speaks of “our willingness to mistreat those weaker than ourselves,” that “given a legitimate reason to be cruel, how often do we jump at it?”

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For nearly the first half of Bait, the excellent debut novel by Nick Brownlee, apparently disconnected events transpire over a period of several days, in measured pace.

The mien of the patrician owner of the luxurious Marlin Bay Hotel, situated in the midst of squalor and stunning poverty in Kenya, is captured by the author perfectly and succinctly: “Getty paused in front of a wall mirror in order to smooth his augmented silver hair across his skull and liberally spray his tongue with peppermint breath-freshener.” [His emotional distance from the lives of those who lived outside the protected walls of his compound, embroiled in a civil war that had to that point cost many lives, is perhaps best summed up by his reference to "a little local difficulty."]

Filled with brutality and actions fueled by – in equal parts – as stated by more than one player, stupidity and greed, together with pervasive corruption, the novel begins with the disappearance of Dennis Bentley, a white Kenyan who ran a game boat and had a reputation as “a loner and a cantankerous bastard,” soon followed by the disappearance of George Malewe, described as a lowlife from Mombasa Old Town, whose young wife is convinced he has been slain. Things turn ugly when a body is washed up on the beach and Bentley and his bait boy are found to have been blown up in the water, in what may be connected events.

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