The sheer volume of mystery books published each year makes compiling a list of the best a pretty daunting prospect. I chose a number of these titles because they have a bit of humor and don't take themselves too seriously. This year, the impact of scientific research was a popular theme. So all of my choices make comments on technology and how it shapes the times in which the story is set. But one of the best things about a good mystery is that the author interweaves diverse topics with agility: The reader may not notice picking up a few new facts because she's having fun.
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The Northbury Papers
BY JOANNE DOBSON | DOUBLEDAY | 288 PAGES
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From the perspective of amateur sleuth Professor Karen Pelletier, we get a glimpse into academic politics at a small New York college. Despite discouragement from her colleagues, Karen reveals her enthusiasm for the melodramatic novels of 19th century American author Serena Northbury and pursues a course of research on the author. Just after Pelletier meets with Northbury's local relatives, one of them is killed. Pelletier is drawn into the family's conflicts, and into fiercer academic infighting, by a change in the heiress's will. Dobson has given Pelletier a feminist agenda, but a very practical sense of her position at the school, and uses the contrasting agendas of the other faculty and prominent players to create a realistic setting for the mystery. This is Dobson's second book featuring Pelletier.
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While Other People Sleep
BY MARCIA MULLER | MYSTERIOUS PRESS | 368 PAGES
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San Francisco detective Sharon McCone discovers that someone has stolen her identity when the impostor begins to make herself known to McCone's colleagues. In a chilling sequence of events, this intruder draws McCone into her game, and the detective can only follow, unaware of her nemesis's motivations. McCone is also hired by the lover of her office manager, Ted Smalley, who wants her to uncover why the loyal Ted has been so secretive and tense of late. As Sharon investigates her friend and tracks down her double, she finds herself visiting old haunts, trying to outwit two trespassers who know the intimate terrain of their subject's lives. Part thriller, part mystery, this book offers a look at the seedy nightclub scene and into McCone's past and larger questions of privacy.
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The Last Manly Man
BY SPARKLE HAYTER | WILLIAM MORROW | 256 PAGES
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Why do these things always happen to Robin Hudson, reluctant sleuth and professional newswoman for All News Network? Just when she has a real staff, a steady position and a romantic life, a mysterious man on the street hands her a hat -- containing a message. Before she knows it, she is rationalizing her involvement with an animal rights group as an assignment for ANN, getting involved in a plan to rescue a band of missing bonobo chimps, going hunting with the head of a corporation, attending a feminist conference and racing all over New York with co-conspirator Blue Baker. Hayter's fourth satirical mystery novel continues to investigate Robin's collection of personal quirks, which include keeping poison ivy in her window boxes to punish burglars and carrying a book on the subway called "So You Think You Have Lupus" to discourage men from asking her out. Check out Hayter's Web site (yes, that is her real name) and read her "I tried to quit smoking" journals.
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The First Eagle
BY TONY HILLERMAN | HARPERCOLLINS | 278 PAGES
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In Hillerman's 15th novel, he shows an artful patience -- his trademark -- as he unwinds the intricate motivations behind a new set of crimes in Indian Country. The book features Navajo Tribal policeman acting Lt. Jim Chee and the retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Readers will find two protagonists of subtle humor: Leaphorn, who is having a rough time retiring, is searching for a missing "flea catcher," a scientist who studies the spread of plague viruses. Chee is investigating the death of a fellow police officer and throughout the trial must work with his former fiancie. Hillerman is a great storyteller and uses a rich cultural mix of characters and unique landscapes to flesh out this tale.
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Tanner on Ice
BY LAWRENCE BLOCK | DUTTON | 256 PAGES
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You can learn a lot of languages if you can't sleep. Evan Tanner, a sometime sleuth who has insomnia due to a brain injury, studies languages, makes his living writing theses for graduate students and organizes various political groups. That is, until he wakes up in 1997 and realizes he has been "on ice," cryogenetically frozen since 1972. One part Trevanian, one part Vonnegut, with plenty of surprises and heavy dashes of humor, Block's funnier moments include Tanner's arrival home to find that his ward, Minna, has maintained his apartment exactly as he left it 25 years earlier, except for the addition of "a strange sort of television set, all tricked out with a typewriter keyboard." His elusive employer sends him on a mission to stir up a revolution in Burma. Tanner's own agenda replaces the assignment and the reader is treated to adventures in the cultural and religious landscape of Burma, the practice of Thai and Burmese Buddhism, traveling in disguise and revolution.
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-->The Moor: A Mary Russell Novel
BY LAURIE R. KING | ST. MARTIN'S PRESS | 304 PAGES
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What if Sherlock Holmes had married a woman who was a writer and his intellectual equal, a woman who became his investigative partner? In this fourth book of her series, Laurie R. King uses the eyes of Mary Russell (who is married to Holmes but nevertheless discovers new details about him each time they work together) to provide insight into the popular detective character. This artful follow-up tale to the classic "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is set in Dartmoor in 1924. King uses the character of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, an eccentric scholar and "colleague" of Holmes, to contrast folk tales and technology, and the newly rich and country folk. Mary's description of how she thinks through all the elements of a mystery -- so deep in thought as if she were in a trance -- is excellent.
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Like a Hole in the Head
BY JEN BANBURY | LITTLE BROWN | 288 PAGES
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Jen Banbury's main character, Jill, the sarcastic employee of the Bitter Muse Bookstore in Los Angeles, is offered a chance to buy a signed first edition of Jack London's "The Cruise of the Snark." She buys it and resells it the same day, pocketing the money. Some serious goons come looking for it, and Jill is the unreliable narrator with a dark secret, borrowing a gun and a motorcycle from a friend and trying to get the book back. She faces her adversaries, learns more than she ever wanted to know about Hollywood acting families and keeps her cool, even while being interrogated. At times both funny and scary, this unpredictable book is a great first novel, and a classic noir tale, '90s style.
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Gone, Baby, Gone
BY DENNIS LEHANE | WILLIAM MORROW | 256 PAGES
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Set in the Boston area, Dennis Lehane's fourth novel is a story about missing children. Private investigators Angela Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie are investigative partners and lovers who work their cases together. At first they are reluctant to get involved in the case of a missing 4-year-old girl, but the girl's determined aunt and a supportive police officer talk them into it. Even though Lehane's narrator is professionally detached, throughout the book you get a sense of the mood of hopelessness in the search and the determination it takes to keep it going. Lehane sets the tone with a sad but practical introduction featuring statistics of lost children in America and the rates at which they are found. Lehane creates a broader picture of life, and contrasts Kenzie's and Gennaro's perspectives as the search is reflected in the media and leaves its mark on everyone involved.
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When Last Seen Alive
BY GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD | PUTNAM | 223 PAGES
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Black detective Aaron Gunner is a loner working two assignments: a missing persons case on a seemingly simple man who turns out to have many enemies and a surveillance case for the wife of a prominent politician who wants proof that he's cheating on her. Gar Anthony Haywood, who is true to the hard-boiled school and pulls no punches, paints a portrait of gritty modern Los Angeles: aloof cops, seedy hotels and gambling joints peopled with bodyguards and gangsters. He also places Gunner in a community of business owners who provide the detective with leads. Gunner comes too close to a secret organization called Defenders of the Bloodline with a reputation for eliminating "Uncle Toms" from the "House of Africa" and who threaten anyone who tries to expose them. Well-paced, realistic dialogue and plenty of action lead up to an unexpected twist ending.
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The Organ Grinders
BY BILL FITZHUGH | AVON | 368 PAGES
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Bill Fitzhugh's protagonist, Paul Symon, meets his nemesis -- Jerry Landis, the corrupt head of a corporation that is destroying the natural resources of all the lands it owns -- early in life. Symon finds it difficult to act and instead writes Landis letters voicing his rage. Landis is dying of a rare disease that ages him very quickly, and he buys into the latest corporate trend: genetic experimentation on primates -- in this case, large baboons -- for organ transplantation and trade. Landis wants to purchase a longer life for himself through technology. Fitzhugh's hilarious second book presents all the modern-day horrors of the destruction humans wreak on the planet (and on each other) at a breakneck speed. The amount of action gives his writing an ironic tone, and you can see events flying at the characters like car wrecks waiting to happen. Fitzhugh has based these scenarios on real developments in organ transplant research, with which he heads each chapter. The observant reader will also find the lyrics of the protagonist's namesake -- musician Paul Simon -- scattered throughout the text.
