While spring may finally be showing its pretty little head in some parts of the world, in others-- like the Sonoran Desert-- it's been here for a while. In fact, it's heating up, so it's time to hit the trail and get some adventures in before the egg-frying heat knocks on the door.
Me? Sure, I'll get some of those adventures under my belt, but when egg-fryin' time comes, y'all know where I will be: in my swimming pool, in the shade, with a cold drink and a good book!
The following are my picks from the new crime fiction being released during the month of April. They are grouped by release date, and I've included all the information you'll need to find them at all your favorite "book procurement" sites. Synopses are courtesy of Amazon. Happy Reading!
=== April 1 ===
Title: Green and Pleasant Land
Series: #6 in the Fran Harman police procedural series set in England
ISBN: 9780727884657
Publisher: Severn House
Hardcover, 224 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Newly-retired, ex-Chief Superintendent Fran Harman and her partner Mark
have volunteered to assist West Mercia police in reinvestigating an
unsolved crime. Twenty years ago, a car was found abandoned on an
isolated road running through the Wyre Forest, its hazard lights still
flashing, the passenger door open. In the back, were two child seats.
One was empty; in the other lay a desperately ill baby. Neither the
baby’s mother nor the elder child were ever seen again.
Where had
Natalie Foreman been and where was she heading? As they question those
who knew the missing woman, Fran and Mark uncover worrying discrepancies
and mistaken assumptions underlying the original police investigation.
In their new role as civilians in a police world, they find themselves
encountering hostility and resentment from some of those they question –
and it’s clear that more than one key witness is not telling them the
whole truth."
=== April 7 ===
Title: Demise in Denim
Author: Duffy Brown
Series: #4 in the Consignment Shop cozy series set in Savannah, Georgia
ISBN: 9780425274705
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "When Reagan Summerside turned the first floor of her old Victorian home
into a consignment shop, she never imagined she’d be harboring a
fugitive in her attic. But after a dead man is found in a bathtub and
local lawyer Walker Boone is accused of doing the dirty deed, she
suddenly has a new houseguest.
Having the lawyer who took her to
the cleaners in her divorce settlement—and who has been getting under
her skin ever since—in close proximity is enough to drive Reagan to
distraction. For the sake of her sanity—and Walker’s freedom—they need
to put their heads together to find out who is trying to get the lawyer
out of the picture . . ."
Title: Blood Sweep
Author: Steven F. Havill
Series: #20 in the Posadas County police procedural series set in southwestern New Mexico
ISBN: 9781464203879
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Hardcover, 306 pages
Synopsis: "Gifted fifteen-year-old Francisco Guzman has become an internationally
renowned concert pianist, touring the world under the auspices of his
music conservatory. That gives his mother, Posadas County Undersheriff
Estelle Reyes-Guzman, plenty of reason to worry--and that's magnified
when she learns that he's in Mexico’s crime-ridden Mazatlan for a
concert series where he may be the target for scam artists and
kidnappers. Estelle’s worries go from bad to worse when her uncle—a man
she didn't know existed—surfaces in an attempt to mend family ties and
leaves a trail of corpses in his wake. Estelle’s attempts to glean
family history—the story of her childhood in Tres Santos over the
border—from her adopted mother, a woman now in her nineties, go nowhere.
Meanwhile, escalating events put Sheriff Bobby Torrez in jeopardy, as
they do newly wealthy rancher Miles Waddell and his pet project, the
multi-million dollar theme park, NightZone, set high on a county mesa.
Just when his sage advice might be most useful, former sheriff and
family friend Bill Gastner takes a dive—in the shadows of his own
garage. Now his far-flung family is added to the mix of people and
events astir in the boot heel of New Mexico."
Title: A Fright to the Death
Author: Dawn Eastman
Series: #3 in the Family Fortune cozy series set in western Michigan
ISBN: 9780425264485
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Mass market Paperback, 304 pages
Synopsis: "After their flight to Mexico is cancelled, Clyde and her detective
boyfriend, Mac, end up snowed in with their families at a supposedly
haunted hotel. Clyde’s tarot card reading mother, Rose, is making dire
predictions for the weekend, and self-proclaimed pet psychic Aunt Vi is
enchanted by the legend of the hotel’s ghost—until the power goes out
and a body turns up.
With a hotel full of stranded suspects,
Clyde will have to draw on all her skills—both the police ones she’d
rather forget and the psychic ones she’d rather ignore—to solve the
bone-chilling mystery before someone else gets iced…"
Title: The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco
Author: Laura DiSilverio
Series: #1 in the Readaholics Book Club cozy series set in Colorado
ISBN: 9780451470836
Publisher: NAL
Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
Synopsis: "Amy-Faye has always loved her idyllic Rocky Mountain town of Heaven,
Colorado. Her event-planning business is thriving, her fellow
book-obsessed Readaholics are great, and her parents live only a few
blocks away. But lately her hometown has felt a little less heavenly.
First, she agrees to plan a wedding without realizing the groom is her
ex-boyfriend. Then, Ivy, one of her fellow Readaholics, dies suddenly
under mysterious circumstances.
The police rule Ivy’s death a
suicide by poisoning, but Amy-Faye and the remaining Readaholics suspect
foul play. Amy-Faye soon discovers that Ivy was hiding dangerous
secrets—and making deadly enemies. Taking a page from her favorite
literary sleuths, Amy-Faye is determined to find the real killer and
close the book on this case. But finding the truth could spell her own
ending…"
=== April 8 ===
Title: Snake Pass
Series: #4 in the Resurrection Man series
ISBN: 9780738743462
Publisher: Midnight Ink
Paperback, 264 pages
Synopsis: "Jim Grant is one of the best cops in Yorkshire, but the tactics that
earn him respect from his fellow officers have drawn the scrutiny of the
brass. And when a discipline and complaints inspector feels he’s gone
too far after a particularly righteous bust, Grant is put on suspension.
Stopping
at an all-night diner to flirt with his favorite waitress helps ease
Grant’s mind—until a couple of goons with baseball bats show up. Never
one to leave a damsel in distress, Grant takes matters into his own
hands.
And that’s when all hell breaks loose."
=== April 14 ===
Title: Every Fifteen Minutes
Standalone
ISBN: 9781250010117
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Hardcover, 448 pages
Synopsis: "Dr. Eric Parrish is the Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at Havemeyer
General Hospital outside of Philadelphia. Recently separated from his
wife Alice, he is doing his best as a single Dad to his seven-year-old
daughter Hannah. His work seems to be going better than his home life,
however. His unit at the hospital has just been named number two in the
country and Eric has a devoted staff of doctors and nurses who are as
caring as Eric is. But when he takes on a new patient, Eric's entire
world begins to crumble. Seventeen-year-old Max has a terminally ill
grandmother and is having trouble handling it. That, plus his OCD and
violent thoughts about a girl he likes makes Max a high risk patient.
Max can't turn off the mental rituals he needs to perform every fifteen
minutes that keep him calm. With the pressure mounting, Max just might
reach the breaking point. When the girl is found murdered, Max is
nowhere to be found. Worried about Max, Eric goes looking for him and
puts himself in danger of being seen as a "person of interest" himself.
Next, one of his own staff turns on him in a trumped up charge of sexual
harassment. Is this chaos all random? Or is someone systematically
trying to destroy Eric's life? New York Times best selling author Lisa Scottoline's visceral thriller, Every Fifteen Minutes,brings you into the grip of a true sociopath and shows you how, in the quest to survive such ruthlessness, every minute counts."
=== April 21 ===
Title: Ghost Image
Series: #2 in the Sophie Medina photojournalist series based in Washington, DC
ISBN: 9781451659375
Publisher: Scribner
Hardcover, 320 pages
Synopsis: "When freelance photojournalist Sophie Medina finds Brother Kevin Boyle, a
Franciscan friar and controversial environmentalist, dead in the
magnificent gardens of a Washington, DC monastery, she is sure her
friend was murdered. Shortly before he died, Kevin told Sophie he was
being stalked, possibly because he uncovered a botanic discovery
potentially worth millions of dollars. Left with few clues to his
secret, Sophie is determined to figure out who killed Kevin.
Beginning
with a key that leads to a priceless original seventeenth-century
encyclopedia of plants, Sophie leaps into an international treasure hunt
following a trail that begins in the US Capitol and eventually leads to
London and the English countryside. Before long Sophie suspects Kevin’s
murderer may have been someone who knew him well. With time running out
and a suspect list that includes the world’s leading botanical experts
and political royalty from both sides of the Atlantic, can Sophie solve
the two-hundred-year-old mystery before Kevin’s killer finds her?
A tale of greed and betrayal involving politicians, diplomats, European royalty, and a century-old monastery, Ghost Image
is filled with political intrigue, history, and an international
high-stakes race against a killer that will keep you guessing until the
very last page."
Title: The Bone Tree
Series: #5 in the Penn Cage series set in Natchez, Mississippi
ISBN: 9780062311115
Publisher: William Morrow
Hardcover, 816 pages
Synopsis: "Greg Iles continues the electrifying story begun in his smash New York Times bestseller Natchez Burning
in this highly anticipated second installment of an epic trilogy of
blood and race, family and justice, featuring Southern lawyer Penn Cage.
Former
prosecutor Penn Cage and his fiancée, reporter and publisher Caitlin
Masters, have barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by
wealthy businessman Brody Royal and his Double Eagles, a KKK sect with
ties to some of Mississippi’s most powerful men. But the real danger has
only begun as FBI Special Agent John Kaiser warns Penn that Brody
wasn’t the true leader of the Double Eagles. The puppeteer who actually
controls the terrorist group is a man far more fearsome: the chief of
the state police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, Forrest Knox.
The
only way Penn can save his father, Dr. Tom Cage—who is fleeing a murder
charge as well as corrupt cops bent on killing him—is either to make a
devil’s bargain with Knox or destroy him. While Penn desperately pursues
both options, Caitlin uncovers the real story behind a series of
unsolved civil rights murders that may hold the key to the Double
Eagles’ downfall. The trail leads her deep into the past, into the black
backwaters of the Mississippi River, to a secret killing ground used by
slave owners and the Klan for over two hundred years . . . a place of
terrifying evil known only as “the bone tree.”
The Bone Tree
is an explosive, action-packed thriller full of twisting intrigue and
deadly secrets, a tale that explores the conflicts and casualties that
result when the darkest truths of American history come to light. It
puts us inside the skin of a noble man who has always fought for
justice—now finally pushed beyond his limits.
Just how far will Penn Cage, the hero we thought we knew, go to protect those he loves?"
Title: A June of Ordinary Murders
Author: Conor Brady
Series: Debut historical set in Victorian Dublin, Ireland
ISBN: 9781250057563
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 400 pages
Synopsis: "In the 1880s the Dublin Metropolitan Police classified crime in two
distinct categories. Political crimes were classed as "special," whereas
theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were known as
"ordinary."
Dublin, June 1887: The city swelters in a long
summer heat wave, the criminal underworld simmers, and with it, the
threat of nationalist violence is growing. Meanwhile, the Castle
administration hopes the celebration of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee
will pass peacefully. Then, the mutilated bodies of a man and a child
are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps
up to investigate. Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past
successes in need of a win. With the Land War at its height, the
priority is to contain special crime, and these murders appear to be
ordinary--and thus of lesser priority. But when the evidence suggests
high-level involvement, and the body count increases, Swallow must
navigate the treacherous waters of foolish superiors, political
directives, and frayed tempers to solve the case, find the true
murderer, and deliver justice."
=== April 28 ===
Title: The Children Return
Series: #7 in the Bruno Chief of Police series set in southwestern France
ISBN: 9780385354158
Publisher: Knopf
Hardcover, 336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "When an undercover agent tracking domestic jihadists is found murdered,
it’s troubling enough for Bruno’s beloved village. But when this is
followed by the return of Sami, a local autistic youth thought lost to
Islamic extremism, provincial St. Denis suddenly becomes a front line in
the global war on terror. Abducted and exploited for his technological
genius in Afghanistan, Sami has used his talents to gather invaluable
stores of al-Qaeda intel—but as an international tribunal descends to
begin an exhaustive debrief, it becomes clear Sami’s former handlers are
far from ready to relinquish him. Now the same jihadists who killed the
agent aim to silence Sami, and as the eyes of the intelligence world
turn toward his case, Bruno must scramble to track down the terrorists
before they exact their own justice.
As if things aren’t
complicated enough, Bruno finds himself contending with the mixed,
alluring signals of one of the high-ranking U.S. intelligence officers
on Sami’s case, even while juggling the affections of his neighbor and
sometime lover. Add to that a member of the tribunal with dangerous
skeletons in his closet, the mysterious history of two Jewish siblings
who claim to have been sheltered locally from the Nazis during World War
II, and a high-profile philanthropist whose presence in St. Denis seems
to be attracting attention from the jihadists, and it’s all almost enough to absent Bruno from the village’s wine festival. "
Title: Bitter Creek
Series: #14 in the Gabriel Du Pré series set in Montana
ISBN: 9781497676589
Publisher: Open Road Media
Paperback
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Lieutenant John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie
Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq and the son of Gabriel
Du Pré’s girlfriend, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Du Pré
and Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking
heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. They locate him soon enough, disheveled
and stinking of stale booze, but a sobering visit to a medicine man’s
sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery: the unsolved case of a band
of Métis who were last seen fleeing from General Black Jack Pershing’s
troops in 1910 before disappearing.
Strange voices within
the sweat lodge speak of a place called Bitter Creek, where the Métis
encountered their fate. To find it, Du Pré tracks down the only living
survivor of the massacre, a feisty old woman whose memories may not be
as trustworthy as they seem. But when Amalie leads Du Pré to Pardoe, an
out-of-the-way crossroads north of Helena, he senses that they are about
to uncover long-buried secrets. Discouraged by the US military, their
lives threatened by locals whose ancestors may have played a role in the
murders, Chappie, Patchen, and Du Pré bravely pursue the truth so that
the victims of a terrible injustice might finally rest in peace."
Title: The Promise
Series: #16 in the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike private investigator series set in Los Angeles
ISBN: 9780399161490
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Hardcover, 320 pages
Synopsis: "When Elvis Cole is hired to locate a woman who may have disappeared with
a stranger she met online, it seems like an ordinary case—until Elvis
learns the missing woman worked for a defense contractor and was being
blackmailed to supply explosives components for a person or persons
unknown.
Meanwhile, in another part of the city, LAPD officer
Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, enter an abandoned building to
locate an armed and dangerous thief, only to discover far more than they
expected: The fugitive is dead, the building is filled with explosives,
and Scott and Maggie are assaulted by a hidden man who escapes in the
chaos, all as a bloodied Joe Pike watches from the shadows.
Soon,
Scott and Maggie find themselves targeted by that man, and, as their
case intertwines with Elvis and Joe’s, joining forces to follow the
trail of the missing woman as well. From inner-city drug traffickers to a
shadowy group of Afghan war veterans with ties to a terrorist cell, the
people they encounter on that trail add up to ever-increasing odds, and
soon the four of them are fighting to find the woman not only before
she is killed . . . but before the same fate happens to one of them."
April is filled with winners, isn't it? Some of my favorite authors along with some intriguing new ones... yes, it's a good month for mysteries! I have to admit that the one I'm most excited about is Peter Bowen's Bitter Creek. The last Gabriel Du Pré book was written in 2006, and I've missed that character a lot. I'm looking forward to reconnecting!
What about all of you? Which books found their way onto your wish lists? Inquiring minds would love to know!
