When attorney Reggie Heath leased office space in the 200 block of Baker Street, London, he was unaware that part of the lease terms required his office to respond to all letters sent to Sherlock Holmes at 221 Baker Street. Making matters worse, his younger brother Nigel, who does clerical work in the office while waiting for his law license to be returned, has become interested in following up on one of the missives. When circumstances surrounding the letter's mystery require Reggie to follow the quixotic Nigel out to Los Angeles with nothing but a 20-year-old address and a map fragment to start with, the game's afoot. Thus begins a complex and satisfying puzzle involving a missing father, a potential civic catastrophe, and murders in London and Los Angeles. Before long, both Nigel and Reggie become suspects in a murder, and solving the case becomes essential.

Although Holmes is the impetus for this story, the detecting itself owes more to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett than to Arthur Conan Doyle. For good measure, there's even a feel of the movie Chinatown thrown in. And that's a good thing, since the action takes place primarily in L.A.

Although this is his first novel, Robertson's writing is smooth and crisp as the story moves quickly from scene to scene. No leaping back and forth in time, and no changes of point of view. It's an easy read that I thoroughly enjoyed and strongly recommend.

Still recuperating from physical and emotional damage sustained in The Bourne Sanction, Jason Bourne ends up in Mali with his paramour, Moira. Although he tries to relax, his instincts are on high alert, ready to warn him of approaching danger. That danger takes the form of his nemesis, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin, who Bourne thought he had killed. Surviving a precipitous plunge, the sturdy Arkadin arrives armed with a high powered rifle. What he does with that weapon marks the beginning of another deadly game of cat and mouse with Bourne, a personal battle that's played out against a backdrop of international terrorism and political intrigue at the highest levels of world government.

This being Van Lustbader's fourth Bourne novel (Ludlum only wrote three), you might assume the author would feel at ease writing about this character, icon or not. Yet that's not the case, with Van Lustbader writing as if he was almost afraid to do something new with Bourne for fear of alienating longtime fans. Van Lustbader is too good a writer to let that interfere with telling a good story--and readers should enjoy the book, despite its by-the-numbers plot. But it would be nice to see him take the series in a daring new direction, rather than strictly catering to fans. Here's hoping that the subtle remodeling job he's done on Bourne over the course of four books allows him to accomplish just that with his next try.

If you are a student of English literature, you probably know that James Boswell was an essayist and diarist of the 18th century who befriended, and later wrote a remarkable biography of, Dr. Samuel Johnson, a leading literary light in London and the author of the Dictionary of the English Language.

For most of this literary thriller, we see James and Dr. Johnson through the eyes of James' younger brother, John, a mentally unstable 19-year-old who has recently been released from a mental institution and is surreptitiously stalking them through London and its environs. As the story progresses, we learn that John is not only jealous of his brother because he is the eldest son and heir to their father's large estate, but because he feels that James has abandoned him for the opportunity to advance in London's literary society.

How does John plan to wreak his revenge on the two? Does he actually have a clandestine relationship with Dr. Johnson? And how much of what he believes is really true? These are key questions as the book progresses in a leisurely fashion from boating on the Thames, to art galleries, restaurants and even houses of ill repute, and to its final exciting conclusion.

What makes this novel interesting is the verisimilitude of the language of the period, reminiscent of Boswell's famous Life of Johnson, and the realistic portrayal of the streets of London in that era. Not coincidentally, I believe, is the fact that 2009 is the 300th anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson's birth. Most of the book is written in the first person present tense which takes a little bit of getting used to, but it pays off in making the story seem more realistic, as if it is happening as we read it.

Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, has a soft spot for women who are victims of domestic violence. In the fifth entry in this popular series, his jail is housing a woman accused of violence against her husband. Mary Barstad has confessed to shooting her husband Wade in the head no less than six times. Nobody is too surprised--Wade was not popular with his neighbors, and his last act was to burn down a barn with his wife's beloved horses inside. Walt is puzzled by Mary's dreamy demeanor and her unwillingness to communicate. Though she is insistent on her guilt, something tells him she's innocent. Though the crime happened in a neighboring county, he decides to investigate, even though it means going undercover.

Dark Horse has what readers have come to expect from Craig Johnson--a vivid sense of place, wry humor, and memorable characters, including an undocumented Guatemalan barmaid who wants to be a detective--but the structure of the story is unnecessarily complex. The narrative jumps back and forth in time between Walt's undercover work and the beginning of the investigation do more to confuse than to entertain; but when finally, the story settles into a straightforward chronology, it takes off at full gallop, leading Walt into a tense duel of wits and endurance with a desperate killer. Readers who persist beyond the first half of the book will find themselves rewarded in the end.

Thomas Cook has a distinctive style: rich, dark, and loamy with the decay of long-hidden secrets. The narrator of his stories often gives the impression of being burdened by the knowledge of what is to come, and the suspense is composed less of adrenaline than of foreboding. These are highly structured stories, full of narrative loops and whorls. Nothing is straightforward because we know whatever is coming next has already happened. It's a claustrophobic psychological game that coaxes us to guess at what will ultimately be revealed.

The Fate of Katherine Carr is, in many ways, a template of his style. A retired policeman dwells on a missing persons case he never solved; a writer is haunted by the fact that the vicious killer of his young son was never caught; and a young girl is dying of an incurable disease that has aged her prematurely. To divert the child, the writer takes a story the policeman has given him written by the missing woman. And all of this is being told by the writer to a man on boat going up a tropical river long after the fact.

This novel won't satisfy the reader who wants to get caught up in a quick page-turner. Instead, it's a set of stories within stories about unanswerable questions. They are nested together so that as they turn, like tumblers in a lock, they line up to unlock the mechanism of our desire to see justice done.

The epigraph from Pope's "Essay on Man" contains the motif of the story: "All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou cans't not see." More a metaphysical meditation on fate, retribution, and narrative than crime fiction, this novel is about the mystery at the heart of things we don't understand: why children die, why justice isn't always served. The answer, when it is finally revealed, addresses the very reason that we read mysteries.

Goodluck Tinubu supposedly died 29 years earlier in the Rhodesian Civil War, so why is he lying dead and mutilated in a tent at an outback camp in Botswana's northern countryside in 2009? It's up to robust and rotund Police Detective David Bengu, nicknamed "Kubu"--Setswana for hippopotamus--to find out. Aiding him in the investigation is Detective Sergeant Mooka, nicknamed "Tatwa" (giraffe) because of his height.

Tinubu is slain at the small Jackalberry Camp, where tourists come to watch birds, wildlife and fauna, and a second victim--a South African also staying at the camp--is soon discovered, bludgeoned to death and rolled down a hillside. It is quickly learned that Tinubu has lived as a respected teacher and headmaster at a private school for many years. Moreover, it appears the two victims may have been acquainted. An empty suitcase found in Tinubu's tent also poses a puzzle as the detectives delve deeper into the background of the tourists, employees and camp operators. Despite its picturesque location, the camp is struggling to survive in competition with 5-star hotels whose owners have discovered the exotic lure of the African country. Two more murders increase the pressure to solve the crimes, with suspected motives ranging from drug running, smuggling, revenge and politics. A touch of humor peppers the investigative process, too. The two South African authors, Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, combining their talents as Michael Stanley, are adept at depicting the beauty of the African countryside and the dark underside that haunts the land. They also thoughtfully provide maps and a glossary of terms and pronunciations to aid the reader.

After serving his time in a California pen for almost beating a man to death, ex-marine, ex-bodyguard, and ex-con bartender Jimmy Boone is content to sling drinks for tourists in a Hollywood bar and stay on the straight and narrow. But when he reluctantly agrees to play "white boy"--pose as a police officer--so his bouncer pal Robo can convince a potential client that the moonlighting "investigative" services he's peddling are legit, things soon get out of hand. Seems the client's grandson, an illegal Guatemalan immigrant, was discovered dead from untreated dog bites on a downtown bus. And what starts as a simple favor, with Jimmy tagging along with Robo to ask a few questions, soon takes a weird turn. With the help of a few eyeball-rolling coincidences straight out of the Elmore Leonard playbook, their harmless deceit sets off a tangled chain of events that ultimately ensnares a spineless would-be dope dealer, his crazy bisexual stripper sister, an unbalanced aging biker looking for one last big score, assorted illegals, a dog-fighting ring, a toothless pit bull, a former French Legionnaire, a treacherous gang of counterfeiters, an animal rights fanatic, a sexy ex-cop and enough other thugs and low lifes to employ a large portion of Hollywood wannabes when this thing is inevitably brought before the cameras. Yeah, it may sound like your typical bang-bang shoot 'em up B-flick, but Lange (the author of the acclaimed Dead Boys collection) tosses in just enough variations and twists (and wit and gunfire) to take everything up a notch--and let's face it: That big, honking climatic nightmare of a desert showdown is just begging to be filmed.