Louis Kenwood, owner of the Boston Red Sox, receives an extortion threat involving the authenticity of the Sox's 2004 World Series title win. He hires private investigator Sam Skarda to discreetly find the blackmailer and, while he's at it, to discover whether the allegations are true.

Sam is a master of networking. He has all sorts of connections in the world of sports, including a vast knowledge of mobsters and sports betting. He uses these to great advantage as he travels from Boston, to southern California, to Venezuela in search of the truth. Though his employer wants to keep the investigation out of the public eye, Sam tends to go his own way in spite of his employer's instructions. He has little patience, and becomes physically aggressive with little provocation, which creates abrupt, but well-handled, shifts in the story from relative calm to violence.

The story is intriguing because of Sam's uncanny ability to uncover small lies and reveal miscommunications. He's a rough hero who also possesses the smarts to put a multiplicity of facts together to reach a solution. Shefchik's incorporation of baseball history and trivia into this action-oriented tale adds to the enjoyment.

Dr. Alexander Blake, an Armed Forces pathologist, is called in to examine a Las Vegas DEA agent who died from a sudden, violent anaphylactic reaction with no apparent cause. Dr. Alex and his partner Castro soon discover eight children also died that night with similar symptoms. What is causing this sudden, grotesque swelling that breaks bones and chokes victims? Is it a new disease, is it bioterrorism, or is it an insane murderer?

This action packed thriller races from one horrific situation to another. Soon Homeland Security, the DEA, and the military are fighting one another for control and a radical Native American group is using the panic to convince the US to return to Indian ways. While Alex frantically searches for answers, she also has to quell government panic.

The detailed pathology of these attacks is skillfully integrated into the story. Andrews, obviously an expert in the field, knows how to explain the medical aspects briefly and simply. Even with a talking DNA computer, the bulk of the story is extremely believable. Alex and Castro in particular are sympathetic. The talented Alex has to fight sexism and stupid bureaucrats, and Castro keeps his marriage difficulties secret from Alex, though they are obviously attracted to one another. Even the criminal mastermind seems to have complex, almost sympathetic reasons for his behavior. Extremely suspenseful, with taut writing and appealing characters, this book is an exciting read.

USA Today reporter Deborah Sharp knows how to write family dynamics, as displayed in Mama Does Time, the debut of her Mama series. As the title suggests, Mama Bauer is a real pistol, and her adult daughters Mace, Maddie and Marty have a difficult time keeping her in check. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a triad of sisters to minister to Mama, who, true to form, gets arrested because she's carrying a corpse in the trunk of her car. How could this feisty church-going woman possibly be guilty of murder, and how can her daughters prove her innocence despite the rigid certainty of the police? Series heroine Mace, the rugged sister who works in a nature preserve, takes on the burden of proving Mama's innocence, with a little help from mild librarian sister Marty, and Maddie, the harridan sister from hell. As the women play out their drama of stereotypical sibling rivalry, something strange occurs: Each sister takes on positive traits of the others, as they work together, for once. Mild-mannered Marty becomes assertive like Mace and Maddie, while Maddie, like Mace and Marty, becomes softer and less of a narcissistic perfectionist. And Mace is able to give her sister a chance, recognizing that Maddie has the potential to become a more caring person. As the sisters learn about themselves and each other, they remain steadfastly united throughout by their love for Mama. Mama Does Time is a humorous, touching reflection on familial love and politics.

Murder, genetics and an ideological battle between ancient and modern ways make a compelling read in P.L. Gaus' new Amish mystery. Professor Michael Branden of Millersburg College in fictional Millersburg, Ohio has his hands unusually full at graduation time with two seemingly unrelated deaths and a kidnapping.

First an Amish shopkeeper appears to have fallen off a ladder--except that he was never flexible or strong enough in life to climb high enough to fall. The victim's brother, Enos Erb, trusts only the professor for help. Then a senior jumps to her death from the top of a campus building, and her boyfriend, who is there with her, becomes crazed with grief. While counseling the boyfriend, Branden also assists the local police investigating the shopkeeper's death, which involves a rift in the local congregation over whether to accept or shun modern medicine. It seems the shopkeeper was less conservative than some in his community. Outgoing and friendly to non-Amish folk, he had wholeheartedly embraced modern ways. The situation gets even more complicated when a pair of Amish children and their puppy go missing and the dead coed's research project on the local Amish (who have intermarried for generations, resulting in genetic problems) links her death to that of the shopkeeper.

The pro-medicine/anti-medicine debate that splits the Amish community literally pits brother against brother and the clash of cultures, and of ideals within a culture, adds complex depth to Gaus' story. Yet although they may argue passionately about the merits of modern vs. ancient lifestyles, the Amish community is united as passionate pacifists, shunning violence even when a sociopathic killer threatens their own children. Their stubborn belief that all violence is wrong may exasperate some readers, but it will make others think, and keep turning the pages. Gaus knows how to set a gripping scene.

Sweeping Up Glass is a Southern coming-of-age novel set during the early years of the 20th century in a small Kentucky hamlet. Olivia Harker grows up in a small apartment behind a grocery store in hardscrabble Aurora with her father, Tate, who doctors his neighbor's animals and brews moonshine on the side, and her crazy-as-a-loon mother, Ida, who has taken up religion since her return from the asylum she was admitted to after the birth of her daughter.

As with all such tales, there are layers of unexplored history to both Olivia's life and the interrelated lives of the people of Aurora, and the plot becomes darker and Olivia's world more dangerous as the novel unfolds. Questions arise over the accidental death of her father, her mother's strange relationship with others in the town, the odd doings of the mysterious Hunt Club out on Phelps' farm, and the shooting of Alaskan Silver wolves imported by Olivia's grandfather that live on the mountain behind the store. The climax of this mystery involving racism, murder, and poverty finally takes place in 1938 and involves Olivia with the local KKK and ritual killings. In the end it threatens both her life and the lives to those closest to her.

Carolyn D. Wall has created an engaging character in Olivia Harker and a complex and densely interconnected community in Aurora, Kentucky. Her evocative prose recalls the regional style of such authors as Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, and Eudora Welty.

A trained historian, Rose Melikan is a newcomer to the mystery scene, but one would never suspect it after reading The Blackstone Key, her wonderful, atmospheric, first installment in a proposed trilogy set in the England of Napoleonic times. From the first chapter she evokes the gloom, penury and perilous political straits pervading the country. Warfare threatens and spies run rampant. Amidst this turmoil, protagonist Mary Finch escapes her grim, thankless life teaching in a girls school. Expecting an inheritance from her uncle and striving to escape poverty, Mary embarks upon an ambitious journey that turns out far differently than she anticipated. While she isn't the heiress she hoped to be, Mary learns a great deal about the world around her, probably the best and most useful education possible. She becomes familiar with the upper class and its pretensions, as well as with the criminal element involved in a dangerous smuggling operation.

As an educated woman, Mary is much more learned and intelligent than others initially acknowledge--or wish to acknowledge. Her academic mastery and keen curiosity provide her with the acumen necessary to decipher a crucial coded message that defies the attempts of others, all men, of course. Like Elizabeth Bennet, the quintessential literary character educated beyond the established norms, the prototypical Mary Finch defies the stereotypes of her class and times. Melikan makes certain that readers revel in Mary's well-deserved liberation.

Ned Oglivie has dropped out and become a trout bum known as "Dog." While fly-fishing in Montana, Dog befriends another dropout, a black kid named Sneed who soon falls in love with a white local girl named Jesse Ringer. When Dog is run out of town by the local sheriff, he comes across a dead Jesse and an almost dead Sneed in what appears to be a murder-suicide. The scene is clearly a set-up, but for what reason? Racial prejudice or some more obscure conflict? Dog has no choice but to stay around and investigate.

You don't have to fish to enjoy this fly fishing mystery. The Clinch Knot, a follow-up to Galligan's 2005 Blood Knot, is a gripping, metaphor-rich story about the freedom to be oneself. The wild Montana landscape teems with bands of pronghorn antelopes and other wildlife and a beautiful but vicious river offers heart-stopping rafting. Numerous multidimensional characters all hold surprises, beginning with Dog himself, a free-spirited drunk who lives on vodka and Tang in a rusted-out RV and who habitually drives as far as his gas tank will take him before stopping to fly-fish and "do life." When Sneed's long-lost mother surfaces, she and Dog join forces to exonerate Sneed and save him from a criminal death sentence. The three become an odd but tight family unit, three fellow travelers on the bumpy, twisty road to healing.

The Fourth Victim is Tony Spinosa's (aka Edgar finalist Reed Coleman) follow up to Hose Monkey. It chronicles the further adventures of Joe Serpe and Bob Healy, two ex-cops who, through various circumstances, one day find themselves in the home heating oil business. Here, the murders of five independent oil men are certainly cause for concern for the duo, but one in particular resonates with Serpe--the death of a crooked ex-cop who once saved his life. Serpe embarks on a mission to settle a debt to a man he despised, single-mindedly pursuing the perpetrators; such is Healy's loyalty to Serpe that he is dragged along for the ride. Although the men realize the grave danger they face, they find their return to the fray invigorating; the hunt for the killers makes them feel alive again, allowing them to do what they were born to do.

Although somewhat conventional in terms of plot, the novel is nevertheless a worthwhile way to spend a few hours, mostly due to Spinosa's crisp, direct style of writing, his gift for creating genuine suspense, and the presence of Serpe and Healy, fully developed, three-dimensional characters who actually change over the course of the novel, affected by its events in convincing ways. Spinosa also shows a talent for delivering credible action scenes, constantly placing his heroes in peril, making readers fear for their safety and root for their success and survival. The violence, when it comes, is sudden and inevitable and intense, guaranteed to set your nerves jangling.<p