distinguished as ever in style; newcomer Joe Barley, the academic gumshoe of Eric Wright's The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn (Perseverance); Sharon McCone in Marcia Muller's Listen to the Silence (Mysterious); Ivan Monk in Gary Phillips's Only the Wicked (Write Way); Spenser in Robert B. Parker's tongue-in-cheek racing mystery Hugger Mugger (Putnam); the Nameless Detective in Bill Pronzini's Crazybone (Carroll & Graf); and Sam McCain in Ed Gorman's Wake Up, Little Susie (Carroll & Graf).
Fans of the amateur detective should seek out Simon Brett's The Body on the Beach (Berkley), first in a new series about the English village of Fethering; Joan Hess's satirical A Conventional Corpse (St. Martin's Minotaur), in which bookseller Claire Malloy ventures among the crime writers; Val McDermid's Booked for Murder (Spinsters Ink), a case for journalist Lindsay Gordon first published in Britain in 1996; Lee Harris's latest holiday mystery, The Mother's Day Murder (Fawcett); and Nora DeLoach's Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (Bantam), about small-town South Carolina social worker Grace (Candi) Covington. Though Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (Ballantine) concerns a spy rather than a sleuth, it fits well in this cozy company.
Those in search of the classical puzzle-spinning of the "Golden Age" can look to Parnell Hall's Cora Felton in her second crossword case, Last Clue & Puzzlement (Bantam); and Francis M. Nevins's Loren Mensing in the Queenian Bene fi ciaries' Requiem (Five Star), plus a bunch of British cops: Paul Charles's Christy Kennedy in the locked-room problem, The Ballad of Sean and Wilko (Do-Not/Dufour); Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond in The Vault (Soho); Graham Thomas's Erskine Powell in Malice in London (Fawcett); and of course Colin Dexter's Chief Inspector Morse in his final case, The Remorseful Day (Crown), though it's more notable as a character study than a puzzle.
Police detectives from outside the classical tradition who were in strong form include James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux in Purple Cane Road (Doubleday), and Ken Bruen's Brant and Roberts in the satirical Taming the Alien (Do-Not/Dufour).
Historicals continue to have a growing mystery-market share. Anne Perry's two Victorian series, though not at their peak, were well enough represented by Slaves of Obsession (Ballantine), about William Monk, Hester Latterly, and Sir Oliver Rathbone; and Half Moon Street (Ballantine), about Thomas Pitt with wife Charlotte mostly offstage. A good addition to the continuing Watsonian pastiche industry was Val Andrews's Sherlock Holmes at the Varieties (Breese), one of several from this prolific author and publisher. Conrad Allen's Cunard Line detectives put to sea again in Murder on the Mauretania (St. Martin's Minotaur), about a 1907 maiden voyage. Steven Saylor's Last Seen in Massilia (St. Martin's Minotaur) is an exception to the general rule that Roman detectives like Gordianus the Finder shouldn't venture out of town. In an example of the past/present hybrid, William J. Mann's The Biograph Girl (Kensington) speculates that pioneering movie star Florence Lawrence didn't really die by suicide in 1938.
Considering that the second edition of my Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction (Scarecrow) was published early in the year (officially 1999 per the title page), I spent surprisingly little time in the company of the lawyer detectives, but I can recommend Andrew Pyper's first novel, Lost Girls (Delacorte); and Gini Hartzmark's noncourtroom Dead Certain (Fawcett) to my fellow legal buffs.
SHORT STORIES
The best book in an extraordinary year for single-author collections was Carolyn Wheat's Tales out of School (Crippen & Landru), which displays the lawyer-author's astonishing craftsmanship and versatility to maximum advantage. Close runners-up were the first two collections by Clark Howard, published within months of each other: Crowded Lives and Other Stories of
Fans of the amateur detective should seek out Simon Brett's The Body on the Beach (Berkley), first in a new series about the English village of Fethering; Joan Hess's satirical A Conventional Corpse (St. Martin's Minotaur), in which bookseller Claire Malloy ventures among the crime writers; Val McDermid's Booked for Murder (Spinsters Ink), a case for journalist Lindsay Gordon first published in Britain in 1996; Lee Harris's latest holiday mystery, The Mother's Day Murder (Fawcett); and Nora DeLoach's Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (Bantam), about small-town South Carolina social worker Grace (Candi) Covington. Though Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (Ballantine) concerns a spy rather than a sleuth, it fits well in this cozy company.
Those in search of the classical puzzle-spinning of the "Golden Age" can look to Parnell Hall's Cora Felton in her second crossword case, Last Clue & Puzzlement (Bantam); and Francis M. Nevins's Loren Mensing in the Queenian Bene fi ciaries' Requiem (Five Star), plus a bunch of British cops: Paul Charles's Christy Kennedy in the locked-room problem, The Ballad of Sean and Wilko (Do-Not/Dufour); Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond in The Vault (Soho); Graham Thomas's Erskine Powell in Malice in London (Fawcett); and of course Colin Dexter's Chief Inspector Morse in his final case, The Remorseful Day (Crown), though it's more notable as a character study than a puzzle.
Police detectives from outside the classical tradition who were in strong form include James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux in Purple Cane Road (Doubleday), and Ken Bruen's Brant and Roberts in the satirical Taming the Alien (Do-Not/Dufour).
Historicals continue to have a growing mystery-market share. Anne Perry's two Victorian series, though not at their peak, were well enough represented by Slaves of Obsession (Ballantine), about William Monk, Hester Latterly, and Sir Oliver Rathbone; and Half Moon Street (Ballantine), about Thomas Pitt with wife Charlotte mostly offstage. A good addition to the continuing Watsonian pastiche industry was Val Andrews's Sherlock Holmes at the Varieties (Breese), one of several from this prolific author and publisher. Conrad Allen's Cunard Line detectives put to sea again in Murder on the Mauretania (St. Martin's Minotaur), about a 1907 maiden voyage. Steven Saylor's Last Seen in Massilia (St. Martin's Minotaur) is an exception to the general rule that Roman detectives like Gordianus the Finder shouldn't venture out of town. In an example of the past/present hybrid, William J. Mann's The Biograph Girl (Kensington) speculates that pioneering movie star Florence Lawrence didn't really die by suicide in 1938.
Considering that the second edition of my Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction (Scarecrow) was published early in the year (officially 1999 per the title page), I spent surprisingly little time in the company of the lawyer detectives, but I can recommend Andrew Pyper's first novel, Lost Girls (Delacorte); and Gini Hartzmark's noncourtroom Dead Certain (Fawcett) to my fellow legal buffs.
SHORT STORIES
The best book in an extraordinary year for single-author collections was Carolyn Wheat's Tales out of School (Crippen & Landru), which displays the lawyer-author's astonishing craftsmanship and versatility to maximum advantage. Close runners-up were the first two collections by Clark Howard, published within months of each other: Crowded Lives and Other Stories of
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