Serial detectives are having a strong year. The raffish Brit Peter Diamond; the cerebral Californian Alex Delaware; sexy, stoic Jack Reacher; the savagely noble Joe Pickett; Main Liner Amanda Pepper; and New England's proper Frances Pratt have all got new cases, and the result is a group of literate, hard-edged tales. This is good news for mystery readers.
True wit is the hallmark of the classic British mystery, and Peter Lovesey delivers it, and a lot more, in The House Sitter (Soho Press Inc., 304 pages, $25). Inspector Peter Diamond investigates the murder of a woman who was strangled on a crowded beach on the Sussex shore. When it turns out that the victim was a psychological profiler working on a top-secret national case involving a movie producer, a pro golfer and a rock singer, the stakes rise dramatically.
Lovesey keeps the suspects in plain view but still surprises the reader in the last few pages. He also skewers academics with the best masturbatory joke since Jonathan Swift created "my good Master Bates" in Gulliver's Travels two centuries ago.
Even better -- in a neat twist that will endear him to English teachers everywhere -- Lovesey weaves in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as a key plot element. This is a literate and delightful mystery.
The enigmatic ex-military cop Jack Reacher is back in Lee Child's Persuader (Delacorte Press, 352 pages, $24.95). In this one, Reacher himself is the narrator. (Is this a trend? Michael Connelly did the same variation with Harry Bosch earlier this year;) It's interesting to meet Reacher this way.
A serial killer from Reacher's military past has resurfaced, and Reacher joins forces with federal law enforcement to track him down, going undercover in the household of a suspected drug lord.
Child has created an interesting character in Reacher, and this book offers plenty of guns, shootouts and high-speed chases to spice up a complex plot. Child, and Reacher, are getting better with every book.
Schoolmarms who solve crimes are hardly new, but Gillian Roberts invests Philadelphia prep-school teacher Amanda Pepper with a hip sensibility that makes Claire and Present Danger (Ballantine Books, 256 pages, $23.95) fresh and lively. Pepper is teamed up with her fiance, C. K. Mackenzie, once again in her part-time private-investigator job.
