This is, as best I can count, the fourth novel to feature Duffy Dombrowski, a likable, big-hearted lug from upstate New York who spends his days as a drug counseling social worker while moonlighting as a heavyweight sparring partner. This unusual occupational combo leads Duffy into situations that are even more unusual, not to mention hilarious and perilous. In The Vegas Knockout, his boss, who despises him, has demanded that he attend a social worker boot camp in the Catskills. But then he is offered a boxer’s dream job—sparring with a world champion heavyweight contender in Las Vegas.

Sending a stand-in to the Borscht Belt, he heads out to Sin City in typical high spirits, accompanied by his faithful sidekick, an empathic basset hound named Al, and four incessantly arguing bar buddies. Naturally, the trip falls a bit shy of his expectations. The contender turns out to be a brutal sadist who likes to damage his opponents; Duffy’s employers are members of the Russian Mafia; his “luxurious suite” is in a second-rate bordello; and there’s a serial killer in town who’s bumping off Mexican boxers and friends of Mexican boxers, like Duffy.

Schreck’s prose places him squarely in the center of the hardboiled-comedy school, sitting to the left of Richard S. Prather and his woozy and boozy adventures of PI Shell Scott and to the right of Tim Dorsey and Laurence Shames with their screwball Florida capers. The Duffy narrated yarn spins out with humor, warmth, and charm to spare, and the author’s reallife experience as both social worker and pugilist add an authenticity to the passages involving his hero’s on-the-job activities, helping to anchor the book’s wilder elements. Reader Jeff Cummings provides a voice in keeping with Duffy’s persona: a bit breezy, with wiseguy elements, but also exhibiting a sentimentality and odd gentility that, in this particular case, work with surprising effectiveness. On top of that, it isn’t every day you find a book that uses a critical basset hound as its moral compass.

When I first started reading this novel, I must admit, I was a little disappointed. It isn’t a true murder mystery, which is my usual fare. Instead, it is a thriller involving an intrepid newspaperman/war correspondent, set in the strife-torn Mexico of 1914. In it, the United States has just sent troops to invade Vera Cruz, while rebel bands around the country, including Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, wage a civil war against the dictatorship of President Huerta (the Jackal).

However, early on, as newspaperman Christopher Cobb begins following a shadowy figure who surreptitiously left a German supply ship in Vera Cruz harbor and snuck into the German Embassy, I became intrigued. And I must admit, as the story progressed, I found myself enjoying The Hot Country greatly. As Cobb tracks the mystery man to Pancho Villa territory, events reveal ever-greater historical import and connections, which raises the ante before the story explodes into a fast-moving, slambang ending.

Robert Olen Butler is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a hell of a writer. His style is a cross between Ernest Hemingway and Mickey Spillane. In addition to the hard-hitting, mile-a-minute prose, Butler takes the reader into the mind of Cobb who, for the first time in his life, finds himself a participant in a war and not just an observer. Along the way, he meets a number of unforgettable characters who stay with you long after the story is done. Viva Robert Olen Butler!

Feisty and funny, wisecracking Odelia Grey returns for a seventh outing in Hide & Snoop. The robust paralegal fears her job is in jeopardy after her law firm merges with another, introducing her to a new boss, Erica Mayfield, who seemingly is bent on putting Odelia on the downsize list. Determined to hang on to her job, Odelia angrily submits when Mayfield orders her to babysit her three-year-old adopted niece, Lily, whose mother has disappeared.

Then, so does Erica.

With no other choice, Odelia and her husband, wheelchair-bound entrepreneur Greg Stevens, take the child into their home and soon find themselves delighted by her antics. But the outraged Odelia still seeks to find Erica and goes to her home hoping to find her, only to discover the bloody body of the child’s mother.

The ensuing investigation places Odelia deeper and deeper in danger as she tangles with wily colleagues, uncovers an illegal adoption ring, and begins to suspect that someone is trying to kill her to protect the scam. Sue Ann Jaffarian’s humor, sometimes subtle and sometimes side-splitting, is the major plus in this mystery. Odelia’s insights into the complexities of office infighting are keen, no surprise since the author works as a paralegal in Los Angeles when not busy writing about Odelia Grey, or writing her other two mystery series, Ghost of Granny Apples and the Madison Rose Vampire series. Followers of Odelia will be pleased to hear that her series has been optioned for television.

Kept in the Dark is an anxiety-provoking glimpse into the mind of a madwoman. Originally published in the UK as Tideline, it is the story of Sonia, a middle-aged married woman who lives in a home overlooking the Thames River in England. On the surface, Sonia is a typical housewife, mother, and career woman (she has an at-home business as a voice trainer). One day, her friend’s visiting teenage nephew comes to her house to borrow some music. Jez reminds Sonia so strongly of a lost someone from her past that something compels her to keep Jez with her—forcibly. As she gets deeper and deeper into her situation, Sonia’s actions and rationale for the kidnapping become convoluted, perhaps even to herself, while she struggles to continue painting a normal picture for the rest of the world.

The story weaves back in time as the author gradually lets Sonia’s childhood tragedy unfold for the reader, shedding light on the darker aspects of Sonia’s psyche and foreshadowing how it will all end.

The most chilling facet of this well-paced novel is the author’s use of the first-person narrative. The criminal as a narrator is a literary device not often used in crime fiction, and it is employed quite effectively in this case. Reminiscent of Stephen King’s Misery, Kept in the Dark is as fascinating as it is thrilling.

The newest procedural featuring Joe Gunther and his crew from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) exceeds already high expectations for Archer Mayor, the series creator. From murder on Beacon Hill in Boston to the more mundane backstreets of “Paradise City” (Northampton, Massachusetts), this tale of treachery and murder gives readers great characters and cheeky dialog, while keeping us guessing.

he VBI are investigating a web of criminal conspiracy that stretches across state lines when a series of Massachusets burglaries involving antiques and expensive jewelry stolen alongside items of scant apparent value link to a series of break-ins and an arson in Vermont. Joining Gunther’s trusty team of veteran detectives to crack the case are the determined niece of the 90-year-old murder victim, and a dogged Boston detective. Following the trail of stolen items, this diverse group soon assembles in Paradise City for an explosive finale.

Mayor spins his story from the varied viewpoints of his colorful characters, ranging from the police to the criminals, and nicely switches between male and female voices. This well-executed mystery gives readers vivid, true-to-life descriptions of law enforcement, without sugarcoating its failures or over-simplifying the humanity of those on the job.

The author has a wealth of experience on which to base his characters: Mayor has been on the front lines of criminal investigations as a deputy sheriff, a death investigator for the Vermont Chief Medical Examiner, and an investigator for the Windham County attorney’s office. He has also served as a volunteer firefighter/EMT. This is the 23rd book featuring Joe Gunther in a series that is overdue for a TV version à la Robert B. Parker’s detective Jesse Stone.

Dixie Flynn’s wisecracking attitude and unshakable tenacity are traits she puts to use daily as a reporter for NOW, San Francisco’s top alternative weekly. She’s knowledgeable about the city’s various neighborhoods, as well as many of the city’s eligible men—seeing as she’s dated quite a few.

So when former lover and rising artist Diego Chino commits suicide in his apartment, Dixie doesn’t believe the tableau that’s set up a little too perfectly. Dixie remembers Diego as being too arrogant and self-centered to take his own life. She’s even more suspicious when an art expert, who represents several high-profile collectors, arrives to cart away Diego’s latest work—while the police are still at the crime scene. Although the San Francisco cops mark the death as a suicide and her editor tells her to back off the story (because the newspaper doesn’t cover suicides), Dixie plunges into her own investigation, maneuvering through a chaotic art world where she finds double-crossing gallery owners and rampant counterfeiting.

Dixie’s sass and humor provide a lively beginning to Angel With a Bullet by M.C. Grant, the pseudonym of Scottish writer Grant McKenzie, but the author doesn’t know when to rein in his heroine. She foolishly shows up at remote buildings without telling anyone where she’s going, including her good friend, Detective Sergeant Frank Fury. And the backdrop of San Francisco devolves into cliché. Still, Dixie amuses readers with her self-deprecating wit and her spot-on thoughts about journalism and the changes in newspapers.

If James M. Cain was standing here right now in front of me, I’d smack him right in the mouth. The ending to this, his long-lost (and last) noirish melodrama has an ending so mean-spirited and casually cruel that I felt like hitting something. Or someone. The saddest irony, though, may be that younger noir fans may not even “get” it, and that older fans, hardened by years of everincreasing violence and shock tactics of so much contemporary “noir” may be too calloused to care. Or notice. But trust me: The trick “gotcha” at the end hit me at a level usually reserved for invasive surgery.

Alas, it’s also one of the few truly effective moments in this uneven, troubled book, diligently and respectfully patched together from numerous, often undated drafts by Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai. The book was still being worked on when Cain died in 1977, but it seems caught in a strange temporal limbo, juggling me-decade frankness—where female sexual response is clearly, if clinically, evoked—with fifties-era sexual reticence, where men are men, women worry about which little hat to wear to which function, and bedroom doors stay shut, barricaded by euphemisms.

It all starts out like a Springsteen song: a young girl, an unwanted pregnancy, a shotgun wedding, an abusive husband, and, finally, a wreck on the highway. But for sudden widow, single mom, and narrator Joan, it’s only the beginning. Penniless, she reluctantly agrees to let her not-quite-right sisterin-law, Ethel, take care of her young son, Tad, while she looks for work. A friendly cop’s lead points to The Garden of Roses, a local joint where scantily clad waitresses offer food, drink, and cleavage. Joan fits the costume and fits right in, and with regular pay coming in (plus tips) she starts to dream of getting Tad back. She also finds herself caught between the attentions of two of her new “regulars”: young handsome Tom, a slick go-getter with big plans of his own, and Earl K. White, III, a lonely, elderly businessman who becomes obsessed with Joan.

Fans of Cain’s classic novels will recognize many of his familiar tropes: lust, class tensions, sham marriages, tawdry moral leaps, desperate ambition, and, of course, murder. But this latter work seems less like a greatest hits album and more like a collection of vivid outtakes; important historically but not quite up to Cain’s best work.