When last we left the intrepid actress Rita Farmer, she and her boyfriend, private detective George Rowe, had solved a major case, and she had given up acting and decided to go to law school.
But bills must be paid — particularly those pesky law school ones — so Rita takes a job as an extra in the second installment in Elizabeth Sims’ riveting series, “The Extra” (400 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95).
This time out, Rita witnesses the beating of and tries to rescue a teenager in South Central Los Angeles. Turns out that his grandmother, Amaryllis B. Cubitt, one helped Rita when income was a problem, and Rita now wants to return the favor by finding out what happened to the grandson.
Amaryllis, who runs a big-time homeless shelter, seems reluctant to accept. But hard-headed Rita, with George’s help, plunges ahead anyway and soon finds herself in an intertwined plot involving drugs and dognapping, ambition and abortion and guilt and greed.
Sims, whose “The Actress” won high acclaim, outdoes herself in “The Extra.” With a story line that veers into myriad directions — but that comes together seamlessly — and an engaging lead character in Rita, she creates an intelligent thriller that’s sure to appeal to fans of complex plots and strong women.

One spade.  Two diamonds.  Four spades.
Four shots.
Therein lies the basis for Gary M. Pomerantz’s fascinating “The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age” (300 pages, Crown, $26) — a true-crime story, sure, but much more.
On Sunday morning, Sept. 29, 1929, Jack and Myrtle Bennett sat down in their posh Kansas City apartment to play bridge with their upstairs neighbors, Charles and Mayme Hofman. One badly bid and poorly played hand led to Myrtle calling Jack   “a bum bridge player” and Jack grabbing Myrtle and delivering several hard slaps to her face.  Jack, a philanderer, announced that he was leaving, but before he could, Myrtle grabbed a gun and in a haze of rage fired four shots.  Two struck Jack and proved fatal.
Riveting in and of itself, the fatal shooting serves as a springboard for Pomerantz, an author and journalist, to recount the story of how a contract-bridge craze swept the nation during the Roaring Twenties, largely at the hands of the self-promoting Ely Culbertson. 
But back to the homicide.  Myrtle, defended by former U.S. Sen. James A. Reed, another philandering husband, a Missouri Democrat and a product of Kansas City’s Pendergast machine, won acquittal in 1931 and basically vanished from the public eye.  Pomerantz uncovers the rest of her life, and it’s an intriguing — and not unsympathetic —  story.
Pomerantz paints detailed portraits of his subjects — Myrtle Bennett, Reed and Culbertson are particularly engrossing — as well as a nuanced picture of America as the Roaring Twenties crashed into the Great Depression.  “The Devil’s Tickets” is bound to appeal to bridge players and true-crime fans and should also win admirers from anyone interested in American social history. 

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” cried Hamlet when he saw his father’s ghost.
And angels and ministers of grace are out to defend the living and the dead in “Angel’s Advocate” (304 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99), the second installment in Mary Stanton’s Beaufort & Company series.
Brianna “Bree” Winston-Beaufort is a living lawyer whose Savannah practice is assisted by angels. Their mission: defend the dead whose judgment in the afterlife has brought them, shall we say, down.
But this time, Bree has a living client, too: Lindsey Chandler, a rich brat who has stolen a child’s proceeds from the sale of Girl Scout cookies. And then there’s Lindsey’s father, the late Probert Chandler, killed in an apparent car wreck and appealing to the celestial court his sentence to the ninth circle of Hell.
The proceedings are highly original and plain fun, as Bree and her angelic colleagues wrap both cases up successfully.
One warning: Before picking up “Angel’s Advocate,” you should read “Defending Angels,” the first book in the series, to see how Bree got started in her unearthly law practice.

In the early 20th century, it wasn’t uncommon for a lonely man to advertise for a wife.  The tale of one such couple is the subject of Robert Goolrick’s richly imagined first novel, “A Reliable Wife” (306 pages, Algonquin, $23.95).
In 1907, Ralph Truitt is the richest man in his little town in northern Wisconsin. His first wife — and Italian countess he married during his lusty youth — is long gone, their daughter is dead and the son his wife bore by another man has left Wisconsin.
Enter Catherine Land, who responds to Ralph’s ad. With an agenda of her own, Catherine is surprised to find herself developing real feelings for Ralph, whose sexuality is revived by his beautiful, “reliable” wife.
Goolrick, the author of the acclaimed memoir “The End of the World As We Know It,”  gives his novel so many twists — some expected, some shocking — that the reader feels compelled to see how this story of hearts under siege ends. 
At once sordid and sweet, “A Reliable Wife” is a powerful cautionary tale about the destruction that the failure to forgive can wreak — and an ultimately uplifting testament to the redemptive power of love.  Unsettling and uncommon, it will leave you marveling at Goolrick’s ability tell a gripping story in breathtakingly original prose.

Gossiping about the Kennedys has been an American pastime — and a guilty pleasure — for decades. And although it waxes and wanes, it shows little chance of ceasing.
Fans of the pursuit will find plenty to enjoy in Edward Klein’s “Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died” (272 pages, Crown, $26).  Klein’s thesis is that the Massachusetts senator, for all his flaws, is one of the most consequential senators in American history.
Among the most interesting anecdotes in the book — and let the reader beware: they’re based on anonymous sources — are these two:
Kennedy had his heart set on Caroline Kennedy’s appointment to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vacant Senate seat in New York.  But when New York Gov. David Paterson didn’t immediately anoint his niece, she didn’t take it graciously.  And it was her three children who convinced her that the quest was showing a side of her that they didn’t like and persuaded her to withdraw from consideration.  And that, Klein says, “came as a crushing blow to Ted.”
Kennedy’s second wife, Vicki Reggie Kennedy, saved his life by curbing his appetites for liquor and reckless behavior.  But she’s hardly beloved in the Kennedy clan, and a power struggle has ensued for who will head the family and fill his Senate seat after Ted’s death: his widow or nephew Joseph P. Kennedy II, the oldest son of Robert F. Kennedy.
Klein — whose previous books include three about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — is a former foreign editor of Newsweek and a former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine.  “Ted Kennedy” is quick, light and fascinating.  Neither exculpatory nor completely censorious, it’s a portrait of an American legend whose life — whatever one thinks of his politics and his past — has been one of significance.

As Alfred Hitchcock proved time after time, tension and humor are not necessarily antithetical.
As he did in his debut mystery, “High Season,” novelist Jon Loomis shines as brightly as the master in “Mating Season” (289 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95).
Homicide detective Frank Coffin left Baltimore after coming undone by his work. Returning to his hometown of Provincetown, Mass., he hoped to lead a quieter life. But murder — as well as crowds of tourists — comes to town again, and Frank and his police partner, Lola Winters, have a particularly unsavory case to crack.
Kenji Sole likes men — married, single, straight, gay, bi. She likes to have numerous lovers on her string, and she’s fascinated by porn. Guess who gets killed.
Frank and Lola must sort through a bevy of suspects: Kenji’s married lovers and their wives, of course, but also her aging father, J. Hedrick Sole, and Daddy’s young-enough-to-be-his-granddaughter paramour, the enigmatic Priestess Maiya, once known as Ruth McGurk. Along the way, Frank’s and Lola’s lives are put in peril by those who want whatever evidence Kenji had on them.
Funny and freaky, “Mating Season” more than fulfills Loomis’ promise. And its enhanced by its author’s talents as a prose stylist. A college professor in Wisconsin who received a master’s of fine arts from the University of Virginia, Loomis delivers arresting prose often enough to make you stop and savor, such as this passage: “Outside, the sky was the color of slate. Gulls orbited above MacMillan Pier, yelping like small, sorrowful dogs.”
Loomis’ is a stand-out series, and edgy Frank and kick-butt Lola are as memorable as any protagonists you’ll meet this year, or any other.

For a male author to create a believable female protagonist can be tricky, but K.J. Egan accomplishes the feat with finesse in “Where It Lies” (279 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95).
The first in a projected series, “Where It Lies” features fortyish Jenny Chase — former professor, single mom, assistant golf pro.  Her life on Long Island isn’t ideal — her teenage son, Sam, is a handful, as is her former husband, Roger — but Jenny is happy, and she’s chasing her dream of playing in the U.S. Women’s Open.
But when she finds the body of greenskeeper Rick Gilbert hanging from the rafters of the cart barn, things go awry.  She learns that Rick tried to call her five times the night before he died, and she thinks the cops have been too quick to rule the death a suicide. At the behest of Rick’s widow — who stands to benefit from a $2 million insurance policy if suicide is ruled out —  Jenny begins an investigation of her own — and nearly gets herself killed.
Egan, a lawyer who teaches fiction writing at Westchester (N.Y.) Community College, worked as a caddie, a caddie master and a starter for 12 years at a country club, and he accurately portrays the worlds of golf and crime. “Where It Lies” is skillfully played. 

In 1931, with the Nazis on the rise and freedom about to collapse, Berlin was a decadent and dangerous place. And the city is as much a character in Rebecca Cantrell’s debut novel, “A Trace of Smoke” (300 pages, Forge, $24.95) as are her compelling characters.
When crime reporter Hannah Vogel learns that the murdered body of her gay brother, Ernst, a cross-dressing lounge singer, has been pulled from the river, she’s devastated — and determined to bring his killer to justice.
And when a 6-year-old boy arrives at her door claiming to be Ernst’s son — and bearing a birth certificate that lists Hannah as his mother — she’s gobsmacked. But as she seeks the truth behind Ernst’s death, she becomes as attached to little Anton as he does to her, and the danger to both spirals.
Cantrell makes this novel every bit as entertaining — and as edgy — as Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” and the stage and film musical made from that work, “Cabaret.”  “A Trace of Smoke” is, of course, an indictment of Nazism and anti-Semitism, but it’s also a moving testament to love, a lesson in tolerance and a reminder that good can exist even amid great evil. And Cantrell shows every sign of a distinguished career in fiction. 
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For nearly 35 years, Mary Higgins Clark has been treating readers to page-turning suspense that frequently features what old-timers might call a damsel in distress.
Having passed the age of 80, she’s not changing a successful formula, and the result is “Just Take My Heart” (322 pages, Simon & Schuster, $25.95).
As always, Clark concocts a complex story, and this one conforms.  Years ago, young actress Jamie Evans was killed, and her roommate, Natalie Raines, was unable to give the cops much information other than that Jamie was involved with a married man. Now, Natalie is a star, and she thinks she knows who Jamie’s lover — and probable killer — was.  But before she can tell anyone, she, too, is murdered.
Enter Emily Wallace, an assistant district attorney (and a heart-transplant recipient), who’s assigned to prosecute Natalie’s estranged husband, talent agent Gregg Aldrich, who has been charged with murder on the word of an ex-con who implicates him.
But something, Emily feels, isn’t right, and as she pursues the prosecution, she finds her own life in danger from her creepy next-door neighbor.
Implausible, perhaps, but “Just Take My Heart” is filled with Clark’s well-paced suspense and trademark twists, as well as some well-placed clues that might assist the reader who doesn’t miss them through rapid reading.

Murder can be a riot, as many writers have shown in the humorous mystery.  But combining laughs with a legitimate puzzle is a far harder task, one at which far fewer succeed.
But Dorothy Cannell has done so since she took a writing class as a lark that resulted in 1984’s “The Thin Woman,” the first in her series featuring Ellie Haskell, loving wife and mom, part-time interior decorator and part-time amatuer sleuth. 
A quarter-century later, Ellie remains a delight as she cracks the case — and cracks wise with British understatement — in “She Shoots to Conquer” (294 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95).
This time out, Ellie, her husband, Ben, and her housekeeper and friend, Roxie Malloy, hopelessly lost in the fog while driving home, take refuge on the moors at decrepit Mucklesfeld Manor. There, they learn that the lord of the manor, Lord Belfrey, has agreed to star in a reality-TV show reminiscent of “The Bachelor.”  The 50-something aristocrat, who looks like Cary Grant, is a classic case of old blood and no money; he has agreed to offer marriage — and a hand in restoring Mucklesfeld Manor to its rightful elegance — to the survivor of the competition among six finalists.
But one finalist doesn’t survive even the preliminaries — her car crashes into a ravine — and Ellie is on the hunt, as she confronts a trio of Addams Family-like servants, a wicked cousin and the usual suspects in an English village.
A satire on the gothic suspense novel. “She Shoots to Conquer”  is also an engaging mystery, as the deft and talented Cannell proves again that hilarity and horror can meet with less antipathy than might have been expected.
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To stand as entertainment as well as education, the historical mystery must excel in three ways:  The plot must be compelling, the characters memorable and the era rendered correctly.
Ariana Franklin completes all three missions in “Grave Goods” (336 pages, Putnam, $25.95), the third entry in her series set in the 12th century and featuring Adelia Aguilar, whom King Henry II of England calls his “mistress of the art of death.”
This time out, two skeletons have been found at Glastonbury Abbey, and Henry is eager that Adelia be able to declare them those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, and thus give the Welsh — if they can be convinced that Arthur cannot mystically reappear —  no reason to rebel. 
Adelia sets out to follow the king’s command but soon is bedeviled by another problem:  Her friend Emma, Lady Wolvercote, has gone missing.
Leave it to Franklin to weave a coherent story out of disparate threads, and she does so in “Grave Goods,” the product of a fertile mind and prodigious research. Add Adelia’s feminist perspective, and you have a novel that satisfies on multiple levels. 
 

He’s one of those people you think will be around forever, so the news last spring that U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., had been diagnosed with an aggressive and malignant brain tumor shocked the world.
Kennedy, whose life has been marked by recklessness and dedication, is the subject of “The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy,” a balanced biography written by a team of reporters at The Boston Globe and edited by Peter S. Canellos (464 pages, Simon & Schuster, $28).  In clear, reportorial prose, the writers trace Kennedy’s trajectory from adored youngest child through youthful senator, through Chappaquiddick and a failed presidential campaign and into his role as one of history’s most influential and effective legislators.
Intertwined with the account of his public life is his position as family patriarch, a status achieved at great emotional cost in the aftermath of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y.
Stringently impartial but ultimately sympathetic, “The Last Lion” may serve as a standard biography of the man Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calls “the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results.”
One big flaw:  There’s no index, and a work of nonfiction without one is inexcusably deficient.

A new series is always a welcome treat for mystery fans, and when it’s set in an English village, all the better.
Carola Dunn — the author of the long-running Daisy Dalrymple series — starts afresh in “Manna From Hades” (305 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95), set in the fictional village of Port Mabyn in Cornwall.
There, the sixtyish, widowed Eleanor Trewynn spends her time working in a thrift shop, the proceeds of which go to charity.  When she discovers what appears to be a fortune in jewelry in a donated briefcase, she’s amazed.  When she finds the corpse of a teenage boy in the shop’s storeroom, she’s appalled.
But with the help of her niece, Detective Sgt. Megan Pencarrow; her neighbors, vicar’s wife Joceyln Stearns and artist Nick Gresham; and her West Highland white terrier, Teazle, all comes right. 
Dunn — a native of England who now lives in Oregon — is equally talented at spinning a good yarn and peopling it with humorous and sympathetic characters, and “Manna From Hades” covers both bases.  Readers will want to see more of this appealing cast.

The Gothic suspense story has been a staple of fiction for years, but few authors have been able to raise it above its reputation.  One who does, however, is Britain’s Andrew Taylor, whose “Bleeding Heart Square” (432 pages, Hyperion, $25.99) spins a wonderful mystery, complete with shocking twists, and takes on serious issues, too.
It’s 1934, and aristocratic Lydia Stonegate has left her abusive husband and taken refuge in her father’s London flat in Bleeding Heart Squre.  Four years ago, Philippa May Penhow, a late-middle-aged spinster who owned the house in Bleeding Heart Square to which Lydia has escaped, disappeared.  And now someone is sending rotting animal hearts to Joseph Serridge, who also lives in the house and had been courting Miss Penhow.
The mystery’s a compelling one, but what sets this elegantly written novel apart is Taylor’s sure sense of characterization and his portrayal of three social developments of the time:  the Great Depression, the British Fascist movement led by Sir Oswald Mosley and Lydia’s awakening to the possibilities of being more than simply a pretty ornament.
Lydia is a memorable creation, and Taylor mixes storytelling with historical commentary without ever letting the scales come unbalanced. 

Entertainment may be the first job of a mystery writer, but it need not be the only one.
Sandi Ault has proved that twice, and she does so again in “Wild Sorrow” (304 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $24.95), the third installment featuring Bureau of Land Management agent Jamaica Wild.
This time out, Jamaica, her horse, Rooster, and her wolf, Mountain, take refuge in an old Indian boarding school during a New Mexico snowstorm.  There, Jamaica finds the body of Cassie Morgan, an elderly white woman who once worked as a matron at the school, where Indian children were beaten and abused.
As she works with the FBI to find the killer, Jamaica finds herself in danger more than once before the case is solved.
A crackling mystery, “Wild Sorrow” also combines Ault’s lovely nature writing with her indignation over the way Indian children were mistreated at the boarding schools.  It’s a potent mix, and Ault invests it with chilling authenticity and suspense — and an epilogue that will break your heart. 
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When Jack Fredrickson’s debut mystery, “A Safe Place for Dying,” was published in 2006, readers foresaw nothing but good things for him.
And has he delivered.  “Honestly Dearest, You’re Dead” (320 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95) finds hero Dek Elstrom, who lives in a working-class suburb of Chicago, learning that he has been named executor of an estate for a woman who lived in a nowhere village in Michigan.
The problem:  Dek didn’t know her or can’t remember her.  Still, he’s not one to leave a job undone, and this job quickly turns deadly as Dek begins to realize that cracking this case may involve a long excursion into his past.
Fredrickson, whose prose in “A Safe Place for Dying” was above average, excels in “Honestly Dearest, You’re Dead.”  And the plot twists that he throws at the reader are designed to baffle — and baffle they do. This sophomore effort is anything but sophmoric, and fans can hope Dek’s next outing will take place soon. 

Professors are supposed to endowed with unlimited curiosity, and Alison Bergeron again takes that trait to perilous heights in “Quick Study” (304 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), the third entry in Maggie Barbieri’s series.
This time, Alison takes an interest in a Hispanic family that often dines at the soup kitchen where Alison is working off her community-service obligations (see “Extracurricular Activities,” this novel’s immediate predecessors).
When one member of the family is killed, Alison — despite multiple warnings from her cop boyfriend, Bobby Crawford — investigates and finds herself up to her eyeballs in issues of illegal immigration and condo development.  There’s the continuing story of Alison and Bobby’s up-and-down romance, too, as Barbieri continues her winning ways.
Mystery fans will find this a fine holiday gift to themselves.

Serial-killer tales are so prolific, it’s a wonder any potential victims are left.  But Christopher Fowler’s sixth novel about London’s Peculiar Crime Unit featuring elderly detectives Arthur Bryant and John May turns the cliché around.
As “The Victoria Vanishes” (352 pages, Bantam, $24) opens, the PCU’s irascible pathologist, Oswald Finch, has died, and Bryant has misplaced his ashes (they turn up in a most inappropriate but entirely fitting place).  But a far bigger problem crops up when middled-aged women are being sedated to death in pubs — and not from aging Lotharios’ conversations.
Bryant and May and their colleagues go to work, and what seems to be a strange but commonplace series of crimes becomes much more, as links among the victims become apparent and Bryant’s intuitive thinking pays off.
Funny, inventive, quirky and ultimately moving, “The Victoria Vanishes” is another triumph for a writer of immense talent. 

For a historical mystery to be a success, an author must mind the four P’s. First, the plot must be engaging. Second, the place must be evoked with skill. Third, the period must be described accurately and in some deal. And fourth, the people must be plausible.
Such is the case with Ann Granger’s second Lizzie Martin mystery, “A Mortal Curiosity” (320 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95).
Introduced in last year’s “The Companion,” Lizzie is — guess what — a companion to her godfather’s widow in London in the early 1860s. But in this outing, she’s sent to Shore House on England’s southern coast to be the companion of young Lucy Craven, whose husband is in China and whose infant has recently died. Also present in shore house are Lucy’s maiden aunts, Christina and Phoebe Roche, the usual retinue of servants — and an alienist (the modern term is psychiatrist) whose is trying to determine if Lucy is mentally ill; Lucy, you see, believes her child is alive.
Enter a murderer, followed quickly by Lizzie’s beau, Inspector Ben Ross of Scotland Yard, the man she met in her first adventure, in which she helped solve a murder. Between their two different approaches, they ferret out the truth at Shore House.
A dandy mystery and a vivid evocation of another time and place, “A Mortal Curiosity” is another triumph for Granger and her appealing heroine.

Nobody knows crime — and how to write about it — like Edna Buchanan. The Pulitzer Prize winner, who covered the cop beat for The Miami Herald for 18 years, is a first-class reporter — and a first-rate novelist, too.
“Legally Dead” (367 pages, Simon & Schuster, $26) finds Buchanan embarking on a third mystery series. You won’t find ace crime reporter Britt Montero or the Miami Police Department’s Cold Case Squad here, but you will discover an appealing new hero.
Michael Venturi is a deputy U.S. marshal who works in the witness-protection program. Over his objections, a sexual predator who’s important to an organized-crime case is relocated to a small town in New Hampshire, where he kills. Disgusted, Venturi —he’s fired before he can quit — relocates from New York to the Miami area, where a chance encounter gives him an idea: He’ll help relocate innocent people whose lives have been ruined.
But first, he has to fake their deaths. And when one of them turns up not just merely but really dead — as do three bad guys he had relocated — Venturi has to race to protect himself and his other clients.
Buchanan knows how to fashion a page turner, and she’s especially adept at creating believable characters and including plenty of local color. And the genuinely shocking conclusion — which may or may not be what it appears — shows her at her most cunning.

For six novels featuring early-20th-century British detective Joe Sandilands, Barbara Cleverly has lived up to her name. And the seventh, “Folly du Jour” (288 pages, Soho Constable, $24.95) is no exception.
This outing finds Sandilands, a commander at Scotland Yard, in Paris for an Interpol conference. Shortly after he arrives, he finds that his old friend from India, Sir George Jardine, is suspected of murdering another old India hand, Sir Stanley Somerton, in the latter’s box at the Folies Bergère.
As always, Cleverly weaves a stylish and intricate plot, as Sandilands and a French counterpart uncover a fiendish killer. And Cleverly has perfect pitch for period and place, whether her hero is unearthing evil in India, England or France.
Missing “Folly du Jour” would be a folly extraordinaire.