Crossroad Blues by Ace Atkins

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

Ace Atkins has been  tapped to continue Robert Parker’s Spenser series, and has exponentially gained popularity with his newly minted Quinn Colson/Ranger thriller series, as well as his stand-alone true crime novels such as WHITE SHADOW and WICKED CITY. Atkins’ first burst upon the mystery scene, however, with the recently reprinted CROSSROAD BLUES, which launched Atkins’ Nick Travers’ series.  CROSSROAD BLUES, follows Travers, a former pro football player turned musicologist at New Orleans Tulane University, as he ventures down to Mississippi in search of a colleague who has disappeared while following a rumor of unreleased Robert Johnson recordings. A must-read.

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Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

It’s impossible to read a Wallace Stroby book without hearing your favorite Bruce Springsteen song playing in the back of your head. The streets  and characters which Springsteen sang about are brothers to the ones that Stroby, a lifelong resident of New Jersey, writes about.  This is particularly true in COLD SHOT TO THE HEART;  a gang assembled in Jersey busts up a high stakes poker game in Fort Lauderdale, where thing go very, very wrong. For gang leader and career criminal Crissa Stone, the issue is whether the heist went awry, or was actually a well-planned assassination in disguise.

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City of Secrets by Kelli Stanley

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

At mystery author conventions, blogs, and the like, the name Kelli Stanley is spoken with love and reverence. CITY OF SECRETS, the second of Stanley’s Miranda Corbie novels, follows the tough and streetwise-beyond-her-years private investigator through San Francisco of 1940 as she investigates the murders of two young women whose deaths appear to be tied to the burgeoning Facsist movement as the United States is inexorably drawn into World War II. The characters, plotting, and prose all shine brightly here, but it is Stanley’s over the top research and penchant for accuracy which is the ultimate reason to stay.

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Buried Prey: A Lucas Davenport Novel by John Sandford

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

Lucas Davenport is the protagonist of John Sandford’s long-running “Prey” series. Davenport, who at this stage is a special investigator for the Minnesota State Police, revisits a case from his past in BURIED PREY when the long-buried bodies of two young girls are discovered at a construction site in Minneapolis. Davenport was a rookie with the Minneapolis Police Department when the girls were kidnapped, and he wants to see them laid properly to rest and for justice to be done. Impeccable plotting, sharp characterization, and occasional dark humor make this --- and the series --- a winner.

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The Best American Mystery Stories 2011 by Harlan Coben

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

Whether you are just beginning to jump into mystery fiction are a full-fledged aficionado, THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011 contains stories from both new and familiar authors. An annual volume edited by the stalwart Otto Penzler and a rotating co-editor (Harlan Coben in 2011), THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES provides a triptych of the length, breadth, and depth of the talent working in the genre. The 2011 volume includes such diverse authors as Brendan DuBois, S.J. Rozan, Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin,  Mickey Spillane and Max Collins, and Lawrence Block, among many others. 

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Thirteen Million Dollar Pop: A Detective Frank Behr Novel by David Levien

A Mystery Lover's Bookshelf, April 2012

One would not ordinarily think of Indianapolis as a setting for a dark crime novel but that is just what it becomes in the capable hands of David Levien. Lone wolf investigator Frank Behr, having suddenly acquired a family, improbably begins working for one of the country’s largest security firms. He early on makes his bones by rescuing an important client from an assassination attempt, but is troubled by the circumstances and the additional fact that the Indianapolis police want to bury the incident. He begins investigating despite being repeatedly warned off and thus places himself alone and in danger. 

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Raven's Gate: Book One of the Gatekeepers by Anthony Horowitz

As punishment for a crime he didn't really commit, Matt was given a choice: go to jail or go live with an old woman named Mrs. Deverill in a remote town called Lesser Malling.
He should have chosen jail.
A strange and sinister plan is coming together made in Lesser Malling, with Matt at the center of it all. People who try to help him disappear . . . or die. It all ties to an evil place named Raven's Gate --- a place whose destiny is horrifyingly intertwined with Matt's own.

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Evil Star: Book Two of The Gatekeepers by Anthony Horowitz

Matt thought his troubles were over when he closed Raven's Gate . . . but in fact they were just beginning. His fate --- and the fate of the world --- is tied to four other kids across the globe. The second is a street kid in Peru. He and Matt have never met; they don't even speak the same language. But destiny is going to throw them together as the evil threat of the Old Ones grows . . . and another Gate suddenly comes into play.

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