Seasons Readings

It’s around this time of year that I always start to get nervous--not because I fear the approaching holidays (in fact, I love Thanksgiving and Christmas, with their opportunities for giving gifts and good cheer), but because I must finally acknowledge my failure to read everything that I’d set out to enjoy before the year’s end. I still have books that came through the mail slot six months ago, and which I dearly want to consume, but that I haven’t yet cracked open. And those are on top of the boxes full of books I resist giving away, simply because I think the titles therein might be unrecognized gems, reads that could well delight me, and that I should be championing, had I enough free hours to devote to their consumption.

Let’s not concern ourselves here with books that are months old, though. There are plenty of new works being issued this winter, some of which will arrive in time for present-giving, others that can be obtained after the holidays, using those bookstore gift certificates you expect to find under the lighted tree.

With an eye toward organizing myself on this subject, here are the 10 crime novels I most look forward to reading between now and March 1:

• Always Say Goodbye, by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Forge USA). Introduced in Vengeance (1999), Lew Fonesca is a widower and former Illinois state investigator, who’s now working as an unlicensed detective in Sarasota, Florida. He tracks down deadbeats and tries to keep clients out of the slammer. Nothing special. Just like the man himself. In Goodbye, Fonesca’s involved in a couple of cases. The first involves an elderly woman who claims she saw a murder committed at her old-age home, though the people who know her best all question the veracity of her story. Meanwhile, our “hero” tries to find whoever’s responsible for running down a 14-year-old boy, and then fleeing the scene. This latter investigation brings back uncomfortable memories of Fonesca’s wife being killed in a accident on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. As the two cases become linked, the investigator steps up his probe’s pace--before the secrets he’s uncovered lead to his own death. A December release.

• The Waxman Murders, by Paul Doherty (Headline UK). The astoundingly prolific Doherty delivers here his 15th novel featuring Hugh Corbett, the clerk to England’s King Edward I (“Longshanks”) and Keeper of the Secret Seal, who’s frequently assigned to investigate political crimes. Waxman, set in 1303, builds first around an attack by the Hanseatic League (an alliance of northern European trading guilds), in which an invaluable collection of maps and sea charts known as the “Carta Mysteriosa” was lost. When a Hanseatic representative, said to be in possession of those documents, suddenly turns up in England--only to be murdered, along with his wife and family--Corbett is assigned to investigate. Who is responsible, and why kill those people but leave the “Carta Mysteriosa” behind? Due out in December.

• The Song Is You, by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster USA). In October 1949, a 26-year-old dancer and bit-part actress from Seattle named Jean Spangler left her young daughter with her sister-in-law in Los Angeles and went to work on a movie set. She was never seen again, though her purse--its strap broken--was found two days later with a cryptic note inside, and rumors spread that she’d fled with an associate of mobster Mickey Cohen. Around those facts, New York novelist Megan Abbott (Die a Little) has concocted a pulpish period mystery set in 1951, and starring a slick Hollywood publicist who’s drawn into the investigation by guilt and threats of blackmail. In Abbott’s imagination, the Spangler case becomes a tawdry and emotionally rich rival to the better-known “Black Dahlia” murder of 1947. A January release.

• The Watchman, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster USA). Back when I was an enthusiastic reader of Robert B. Parker’s novels featuring Boston P.I. Spenser, I would muse occasionally on what Parker might do with a novel told from the viewpoint of Hawk, Spenser’s menacing sidekick. Parker never took that leap himself. But now Crais, whose Elvis Cole is one of several American gumshoes who’ve become more popular as Spenser has become less so, is taking up the challenge I thought Parker should have: His forthcoming novel puts Cole’s ex-Marine and part-time mercenary sidekick, Joe Pike, in the driver’s seat. There isn’t a lot of publicity out yet about The Watchman, but here’s what the Simon & Schuster catalogue copy reads: “Joe Pike owes a bad man a favor. And that favor is to protect the life of one Larkin Conner Barkley, a spoiled rich girl who happens to be a federal witness in a case against the mob. When Pike and the girl immediately come under intense fire, he hatches a plan: disappear into the anonymous underbelly of Los Angeles, turn the tables, and hunt down the hunters. Enlisting the help of P.I. Elvis Cole, Pike uncovers a web of lies and betrayals; even the cops aren’t who they seem. But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Pike’s biggest threat may be the girl herself--an angry soul determined to destroy herself, unless Joe can fill the void in her bruised and fragile heart.” Sign me up for a copy. A late January release, apparently.

• In This Rain, by S.J. Rozan (Delacorte USA). Rozan’s day job as an architect must’ve come in handy when she was penning this novel about corruption in New York City’s construction industry. Her tale follows Joe Cole, a disgraced and lonely former city investigator, whose ex-partner convinces him to help her probe a murder at a building site. Quickly, the case takes on political implications, as questions are raised about the mayor’s ties to a deep-pocketed developer, a borough president’s concealed desires, and a community activist’s intentions. Rozan is a fine writer with an obvious love for Manhattan that I expect will come through as clearly here as it did in her acclaimed 2004 novel, Absent Friends. A January release.

• The Strangler, by William Landay (Delacorte USA). Landay’s 2003 debut novel, Mission Flats, about a small-town Maine police chief who investigates the murder of a prominent prosecutor from the Boston district attorney’s office, was a stunner. I’m hoping he can do even half as well with The Strangler. Set in Boston in 1963, as the city tenses under coverage of the Boston Strangler slayings, Landay’s book follows the brothers Daley, all three sons of a veteran cop--and all representing different sides of the law, from a gambing-addicted policeman, to a Harvard-educated lawyer working on the Strangler task force, to a successful burglar. Forced by circumstances to peer deeply into this serial killer’s rage, the brothers must also address their own family’s secrets, and the single death that’s changed them all. Also due out in January.

• The Secret Hangman, by Peter Lovesey (Sphere UK). This ninth Inspector Peter Diamond novel (after last year’s The Circle) finds the Bath detective being pursued by a female “secret admirer” even as he’s chasing after an apparent a serial killer. First called in to track down the missing mother of two young girls, the irritable Diamond locates her--hanged from a children’s swing set. Not long after, that woman’s ex-hubby is found in a cave, also strung up by the neck. A remorse suicide? Diamond doesn’t think so, especially as the pattern of hangings continues. However, our widower sleuth is being distracted from these crimes not only by that aforementioned admirer, but also by a fetching detective constable who simply can’t be ignored. The Secret Hangman is due out in Britain in February, but American readers will have to wait for the book until June.

• Resurrectionist, by James McGee (HarperCollins UK). Ratcatcher, the swashbuckling and romantic early 19th-century adventure in which Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood made his debut, was among the most enjoyable books I read this year, so I am very much looking forward to its sequel. In Resurrectionist, we find Hawkwood mixing it up with increasingly covetous London body snatchers, while he also investigates particularly brutal murders at Bethlem Royal Hospital (aka “Bedlam”), the city’s home for the insane. As Hawkwood connects these two inquiries, he finds himself “at the literal cutting edge of technology--and beyond.” A February release.

• Hidden Depths, by Ann Cleaves (Macmillan UK). I made the error of passing up Cleaves’ Raven Black, only to have it capture this year’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. I hope not to make that mistake again, so count me in for this forthcoming third entry in her Inspector Vera Stanhope series (after Telling Tales, 2005). Set on England’s Northumberland coast, it begins with the strangling of a boy, found by his mother in a bathtub, the water covered with wild flowers. This is soon followed by the killing of an attractive young teacher, Lily Marsh, also found in flower-sprinkled water. Slowly, Stanhope digs background from the victims’ friends, along the way becoming suspicious of the odd group that found Marsh’s body. Another February release.

• The Grave Tattoo, by Val McDermid (St. Martin’s Minotaur USA). In what sounds like a most creative blend of history and mystery, McDermid (The Torment of Others) imagines the discovery of a bizarrely tattooed and shriveled body in a bog in England’s Lake District. Could it be the last remains of 18th-century HMS Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian? Scholar Jane Gresham, an expert on the works of William Wordsworth, thinks she may be able to find the answer--and Christian’s confession of his crimes--in a Wordsworth manuscript. But her hunt for that manuscript is complicated by a precocious 13-year-old girl whom Jane has befriended, and who is now a murder suspect. Meanwhile, she is being pursued by an ex-lover with his own designs on the Wordsworth work. Look for The Grave Tattoo in February.

Of course, those aren’t nearly enough titles to keep me occupied for the next few months. Which means I should also have a chance to dig into Thomas H. Cook’s The Cloud of Unknowing, Ken Kuhlken’s The Do-Re-Mi, Theresa Schwegel’s Probable Cause, David Dickinson’s Death on the Nevskii Prospekt, Candace Robb’s The Guilt of Innocents, Edward Marston’s The Painted Lady, and probably David Skibbins’ The Star, as well. Then it will be on to the whole spring collection, which is set to include Ed Gorman’s Fools Rush In, Ken Bruen’s Cross, Reginald Hill’s Death of Dalziel, Declan Hughes’ The Color of Blood, and Loren D. Estleman’s American Detective.

I guess I should concede right this minute that I’ll never get through everything I want to read in 2007, either. But it will sure be a pleasure trying.

READ MORE: “Please, Give Me the ‘Axe,’” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet).