New Inmates
(May 2008)

 

 Careless in Red by Elizabeth George, Harper, $27.95.
After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. But no matter how far he walks, no matter how exhausting his days, the painful memories of Helen's death do not diminish.  On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that a clever killer is indeed at work, and this time Lynley is not a detective but a witness and possibly a suspect.



   

Phantom Prey by John Sandford, Putnam, $26.95.
Lucas Davenport has had disturbing cases before but never one quite like this, in the shocking new Prey novel. A widow comes home to her large house in a wealthy, exclusive suburb to find blood everywhere, no body and her college aged daughter missing. Sheas always known that her daughter ran with a bad bunch. What did she call them “Goths?”Freaks" is more like it, running around with all that makeup and black clothing, listening to that awful music, so attracted to death. And now this.  But the police can’t find the girl, alive or dead, and when a second Goth is found slashed to death in Minneapolis, the widow truly panics.
   

The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor, St. Martin’s, $24.95. (Available May 13) The Roman civil war has come to its conclusion - Pompey is dead, Egypt is firmly under the control of Cleopatra (with the help of Rome's legions), and for the first time in many years Julius Caesar has returned to Rome itself. Appointed by the Senate as Dictator, the city abounds with rumors asserting that Caesar wishes to be made King - the first such that Rome has had in centuries. And that not all of his opposition has been crushed.  Gordianus, recently returned from Egypt with his wife Bethesda, is essentially retired from his previous profession of 'Finder' but even he cannot refuse the call of Calpurnia, Caesar's wife. Troubled by dreams foretelling disaster and fearing a conspiracy against the life of Caesar, she had hired someone to investigate the rumors. But that person, a close friend of Gordianus, has just turned up dead - murdered -- on her doorstep.