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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Seeing Stars
Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).
The review journal assigns the star.
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Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Starred Reviews
Crime Fiction Stars of 2000
September 9, 2008
July - December
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
A 
indicates an Overbooked
Jump
for Joy book.
December
- Robbers
Author: Cook, Christopher
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786707763 Date: 2000
Booklist
This brilliant and tough debut novel follows Eddie and Ray Bob, one a sociopath and the other a talented blues guitarist, and the Texas Ranger who pursues them. As the two losers wind their way across Texas, robbing and killing with no long-range plans, readers will be able to smell the magnolias and taste the dust.
Suggested Reading: Driven Stars | Debuts | Hard-Boiled/Noir
Updated 10/27/00 - Authorized Personnel
Only
Author: D'Amato, Barbara
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312865643 Date: 2000
PW
While Chicago cop Suze Figueroa spends her work day tracking down an elusive serial killer, she has no idea that a much more personal danger lives under her own roof, eating her food, handling her gun, and watching her loved ones. Strips of yellow tape may keep curious bystanders away from crime scenes, but nothing so simple can protect Suze and her family from the menace that has invaded the safety of their home.
Updated 11/15/00 - Face Down Under the
Wych Elm
Author: Emerson, Kathy Lynn
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312265891 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Widowed herbalist Lady Susanna Appleton sets out to save her former nemesis from being burned at the stake. Constance Crane was once the mistress of Susanna's late husband. Ignoring a storm of superstition and suspicion, Susanna deduces the victims weren't hexed but poisoned and races to prove something more sinister than Constance is behind the murders.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
Updated 10/5/00 - Code to Zero
Author: Follett, Ken
Publisher: Dutton $ 26.95 ISBN: 0525945636 Date: 2000
Booklist
PW
At Cape Canaveral, a countdown has begun in January 1958. On launch pad 26B sits Explorer 1, America's best hope to match the Soviet Sputnik and regain the lead in the race for the skies above. In the meanwhile, a man wakes to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station. And until he remembers who he is, he may be left powerless to save the launch of Explorer--and with it, America's future.
Suggested Reading: Spaced Stars
Updated 11/30/00 - The Squire's Tale
Author: Frazer, Margaret
Publisher: Berkley $ 21.95 ISBN: 0425176789 Date: 2000
PW
In this latest installment of Frazer's "superbly researched series" (Publishers Weekly), Dame Frevisse finds herself in the midst of a noble family with not-so-noble secrets. Drawn from the nunnery into a web of conflicting loyalties, she must see that justice is done after honest loves and dishonest lusts spawn anger, greed, and murder.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
Updated 11/9/00 - A Mystery of Errors
Author: Hawke, Simon
Publisher: Forge $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312873727 Date: 2000
LJ
Symington Smythe, a would-be thespian, and William Shakespeare meet in a tavern on the road to London and become traveling companions. Once in London, they debut as amateur detectives on a case of matrimony, mayhem, and possible murder.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars | Shakespearean Stars
Updated 1/18/01 - P.E.A.C.E
Author: Holmes, Guy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $23 ISBN: 0684870797 Date: 2000
Kirkus
The police procedural meets 1984. In this sharply drawn, prophetic literary thriller, an anti-crime video surveillance system turns New York City into the base for an astonishing conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government.
Suggested Reading: Conspiracy Theory | Dystopian Stars
Updated 10/5/00 - White-Out
Author: Marshall, James Vance
Publisher: Soho $ 23 ISBN: 1569472246 Date: 2000
Booklist
The only survivor of a secret World War II British naval mission to Antarctica struggles for life and sanity in this harshest of environments. This is a paean to the natural beauty of Antarctica as well as a memorable story of courage, of the triumph of the human spirit, and of a transcendent love.
Suggested Reading: Antarctica
Updated 12/15/00 - Pray and Die
Author: Whitelaw, Stella
Publisher: Severn $ 26 ISBN: 0727855921 Date: 2000
Booklist
Someone has to investigate the mean streets of Latching, West Sussex -- and that someone is ex-policewoman Jordan Lacey, now advertising her services as a private investigator and working out of a junk shop in the quiet part of town. But will there really be enough crime to keep her in business? It looks like there is when Lacey discovers the body of a dead nun in an abandoned hotel.
Updated 11/22/00
November
- Hit List: Keller
Author: Block, Lawrence
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060198338 Date: 2000
Booklist
Keller, assassin for hire, is back in the explosive sequel to Block's bestselling Hit Man. This time, something's not right, and Keller's razor-sharp instincts are tingling. It's rapidly becoming obvious that he, himself, is in another's rifle sight and that someone has put out a contract on him.
Suggested Reading: Hit Men
Updated 7/25/00 - Suspension
Author: Crabbe, Richard E.
Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312203713 Date: 2000
Library Journal
In this thrilling first novel in the tradition of The Alienist and The Great Bridge, a small group of die-hard Confederates, led by their fanatical captain, endeavors to destroy the Great East River Bridge nearly 20 years after the war.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Historical Mystery Stars | Civil War Stars
Updated 9/7/00 - Honest Doubt: Kate Fansler
Author: Cross, Amanda
Publisher: Ballantine $ 22 ISBN: 0345440110 Date: 2000
Library Journal
From Amanda Cross, the master of the literary mystery novel: the latest installment in her legendary series about academic sleuth Kate Fansler. In this highly anticipated sequel to The Puzzled Heart, Kate Fansler abets private investigator Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven in a bizarre murder-by-poisoning case.
Updated 8/23/00 - Blood and Guile
Author: Hoffman, William
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24 ISBN: 0060197943 Date: 2000
Kirkus
PW
Not an avid hunter, Walter Frampton II, Esq., is invited on a grouse hunting trip by his best friend, Drake Wingo and Cliff Dickens, another old friend. One grouse is bagged when Walter and Drake hear three shots -- a distress signal from Cliff. The fourth member of their group, a polite stranger, has been accidentally shot and killed, but the details don't add up.
Updated 9/21/00 - The Last City Room
Author: Martinez, Al
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN:0312209010 Date: 2000
Kirkus
It's a tradition in the city room of "The Hearld" for journalists to die at their desks. William Colfax is asked to join the city room's staff shortly after the death of his predecessor. Set in the turbulent 1960s, this novel depicts the decline of an influential newspaper in San Francisco.
Updated 9/20/00 - Roses Are Red
Author: Patterson, James
Publisher: Little Brown $ 26.95 ISBN: 0316693251 Date: 2000
Booklist
A brilliant criminal known only as the Mastermind orchestrates a series of bank robberies that are notable for their explosive violence when the demands are not met exactly. But before Detective Alex Cross gets near identifying a suspect, the Mastermind makes it his personal goal to take revenge on Cross's entire team, one person at a time--before coming after Cross himself.
Updated 8/18/00 - Nocturnal Butterflies of
the Russian Empire
Author: Prieto, Jose Manuel
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802116655 Date: 2000
Booklist
A brilliant novel of love, international smuggling, and the art of letter writing is offered by one of Latin America's promising young literary talents. J. lives on the fringes of Eastern Europe, a smuggler fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. Offered a commission to illegally trap a rare Russian butterfly, he decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover, back into her homeland.
Updated 10/27/00 - Set In Darkness
Author: Rankin, Ian
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312206097 Date: 2000
Booklist
Kirkus
Library Journal
PW
As the first Scottish Parliament in 300 years prepares to convene, Queensbury House is in the middle of John Rebus's turf, keeping him busy with ceremonial tasks. But when a long dead body is found in the fireplace, and two more deaths occur, Rebus is led to a confrontation with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Scottish Crime Fiction | British Cops
Updated 9/29/00 - Darwin's Blade
Author: Simmons, Dan
Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0380973693 Date: 2000
PW
As an expert in accident reconstruction, it is Darwin Minor's job to use science and instinct to unravel the real causes of unnatural disasters. But a series of seemingly random high-speed fatal car wrecks -- accidents which seem staged -- is leading him down a dangerous road.
Updated 11/6/00 - Flashfire
Author: Stark, Richard
Publisher: Mysterious $ 22.95 ISBN: 0892967102 Date: 2000
PW
The acclaimed author of The Hook brings back contemporary crime fiction's greatest criminal to punish the crooks who dared double cross him. Parker doesn't care for Melander's plan for a new heist that uses the proceeds from one heist to clean out Palm Beach of several pieces of expensive jewelry. Parker is tailing the gang South, with a plan for getting back his own cut, plus and the entire swag of gems.
Suggested Reading: Hard-Boiled/Noir
Updated 9/14/00 - Scar Tissue: Brady Coyne
Author: Tapply, William G.
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312266790 Date: 2000
PW
Boston attorney Brady Coyne agrees to handle discussions with police for his client whose 15-year-old son and girlfriend who are killed in a car accident. But he soon discovers inconsistencies at the accident scene that authorities seem to be trying to hide.
Updated 9/7/00 - All the Rage: Repairman Jack
Author: Wilson, F. Paul
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312867964 Date: 2000
PW
In the new Repairman Jack thriller, Jack fights against a new street drug called Berserk. "Repairman Jack is one of the most original and intriguing characters to arise out of contemporary fiction in ages. His adventures are hugely entertaining".--Dean Koontz.
Suggested Reading: Cross Genre Stars
Updated 9/21/00
October
- Bloodroot
Author: Even, Roy Aaron
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312265611 Date: 2000
Library Journal
This debut novel explores the circumstances surrounding a real event in Virginia in 1936--the shooting of an aging black caretaker and his sister who were being evicted from their land. The story is told through the eyes of the 50-year-old caretaker involved in the violent standoff and a young county employee fresh out of school.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars | Debuts
Updated 10/11/00 - Shattered
Author: Francis, Dick
Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399146601 Date: 2000
Booklist
Menace and murder go hand in hand in the electrifying new thriller from the grand master of crime fiction. When jockey Martin Stukely dies after a fall at Cheltenham, his friend Gerald Logan becomes embroiled in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. The glassmaker is suddenly faced with terrifying threats to his business, his courage, and even his life.
Suggested Reading: Horse Tales
Updated 8/18/00 - Enigmatic Disappearance
Author: Jeffries, Roderic
Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312265832 Date: 2000
Booklist
Inspector Alvarez likes the quiet life, away from the antics of Mallorca's expatriate community. When his tranquility is shattered by the disappearance of an Englishwoman, Alvarez thinks he has solved the case, but proving his theory is another matter.
Suggested Reading: European Crime Fiction
Updated 8/18/00 - The Cave
Author: Krabbe, Tim
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 374119783 Date: 2000
PW
Library Journal
Egon and Axel first meet on a field trip to the Belgium Caves, and remain friends through adulthood, although each takes a different path in life. Egon becomes a geologist, but Axel becomes a drug dealer whose past haunts Egon's estranged wife.
Updated 10/11/00 - Dark Coulee
Author: Logue, Mary
Publisher: Walker $ 23.95 ISBN: 0802733514 Date: 2000
Kirkus
After moving with her daughter to rural Wisconsin after her husband's death, Claire Watkins is enjoying being a small-town cop. But the murder of a well-liked citizen forces Claire to uncover truths that others want to keep hidden at any cost.
Suggested Reading: Cops
Updated 9/20/00 - Double Deal
Author: McClister, Michael
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 031226562x Date: 2000
Booklist
Tennessee's governor is threatened with assassination, but his wife is kidnapped, and the bizarre ransom demands impels him to set up his own covert operation to get her back. His Vietnam buddy, Elmo Flinn, quickly reassembles his old commando corps to battle the kidnappers.
Updated 8/18/00 - The Advocate
Author: Mesce, Bill and Szilagyi, Steve
Publisher: Bantam $ 23.95 ISBN: 055380118x Date: 2000
PW
For those who loved the no-holds-barred military investigative work of The General's Daughter and the electrifying legal stratagems of John Katzenbach's Hart's War comes an edge-of-your-seat thriller that asks: Is war a crime? The Advocate is a suspenseful human drama about the loss of innocence and the seduction of power.
Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
Updated 8/9/00 - Immaculate Deception
Author: Pears, Iain
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743212576 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Booklist
This seventh novel in the series featuring art historian Jonathan Argyll begins as Jonathan's new wife, Italian Art Theft Squad leader Flavia di Stefano, is under pressure to find a painting stolen en route from the Louvre to Rome. Meanwhile, Jonathan investigates a Renaissance painting of the Immaculate Conception, owned by Flavia's retired mentor.
Updated 9/11/00 - Cold Is the Grave
Author: Robinson, Peter
Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 0380978083
Kirkus
Booklist
Library Journal
After trying to destroy the career of Inspector Alan Banks, Chief Constable Riddle now turns to Banks for help when pictures of Riddle's missing daughter turn up on a pornographic web site. The search for the missing young woman draws Banks deep into London's sordid underbelly of drugs, crime, and sex.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | British Police
Updated 10/11/00 - Last Seen in Massilia: A
Novel of Ancient Rome
Author: Saylor, Stephen
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312209282 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Booklist
Julius Caesar and Pompei bring their Roman Civil War to the city of Massilia. Gordianus the Finder seeks his missing son Meto, once a lieutenant to Caesar but now rumored to be a traitor, who was last seen in Massilia, but a gruesome murder interrupts his search.
Updated 9/11/00
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars - Grasshopper
Author: Vine, Barbara
Publisher: Harmony $ 25 ISBN: 0609607898 Date: 2000
Booklist
Library Journal
Ruth Rendell's tenth novel, written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, tells the chilling story of an English woman who recalls her life, realizing her compulsion for climbing and peering into windows saved her life, but admitting it cost a terrible price.
Suggested Reading: Psychological Suspense Stars
Updated 10/23/00 - A Small Death in Lisbon
Author: Wilson, Robert
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151006091 Date: 2000
Kirkus
PW
Nazi wartime deals and the murder of a young girl in today's Portugal are linked with stunning originality and suspense in a book that won the Golden Dagger for best crime/suspense novel of 1999. - Publisher marketing.
Updated 9/7/00
September
- Cold Steel Rain
Author: Abel, Kenneth
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146628 Date: 2000
Booklist
A gripping mystery set in New Orleans features an idealistic attorney reduced to political gopher who's set up to take the fall--posthumously--to ward off a breaking political scandal.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction | New Orleans
Updated 8/18/00 - Purple Cane Road
Author: Burke,
James Lee
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385488440 Date: 2000
Booklist
Library Journal
PW
While helping out an old friend, Dave Robicheaux is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks if he is Mae Guillory's boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. Thus begins Burke's finest Robicheaux novel, a work with all the dimensions of a classic.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Private Investigators | New Orleans
Updated 8/8/00 - Flint
Author: Eddy, Paul
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146539 Date: 2000
PW
An exceptionally talented undercover policewoman, Grace Flint nearly dies in a botched sting operation. Months later, physically healed but psychologically scarred, she gets an unexpected clue about her attacker and disappears on a mission of revenge, unaware that she is about to pull the first string that will unravel a complex web of international treachery, extortion, and murder.
Suggested Reading: New Orleans | Conspiracy Theory
Updated 6/30/00 - Amnesia
Author: Ephron, G.H.
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 031226867x Date: 2000
Kirkus
Sylvia Jackson was shot in the head and left for dead, her boyfriend murdered. Waking from a coma after six weeks, she remembers nothing, until three months later, when she begins to recall details of the crime and the killer. It's up to forensic psychologist Dr. Peter Zak to determine how reliable Syl's memory really is and use those memories to uncover the truth.
Suggested Reading: Crime Scene Investigations | Amnesia & Memory Stars
Updated 7/21/00 - Strawberry Tattoo
Author: Henderson, Lauren
Publisher: Crown $ 12.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0609806858 Date: 2000
Booklist
Sam Jones comes to the Big Apple to exhibit her work at a gallery featuring young British artists. Shortly after her arrival, a gallery employee is found strangled in Central Park's Strawberry Fields. Will the strawberry tattoo give away the murderer's identity before Sam herself becomes a target?
Updated 7/25/00 - The Snowfly
Author: Heywood, Joseph
Publisher: Lyons $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585740209 Date: 2000
PW
The Snowfly is a spellbinding novel of suspense, international intrigue, and fly fishing as UPI reporter Bowie Rhodes searches for the mythical creature that attracts trout of such size that they couldn't possibly exist in the world as we know it.
Suggested Reading: Wildlife
Updated 8/7/00 - 24 Hours
Author: Iles, Greg
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146245 Date: 2000
PW
The bestselling author of Mortal Fear and The Quiet Game crafts the story of a psychopathic kidnapper who has perfected the unbeatable crime - man who has never been caught and whose victims have never talked to the police. But this man has never met the likes of Will and Karen Jennings.
Suggested Reading: Psycho Killers | Serial Killers | Playing With Time | Diabetes
Updated 7/26/00 - Stalker
Author: Kellerman, Faye
Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0688156134 Date: 2000
PW
Cynthia Decker may be a rookie, but as the daughter of Lieutenant Peter Decker, one of LA's finest, she's no stranger to the cop's life. Her intensely protective father isn't happy that she joined the force but agrees to a shaky truce. Unfortunately, that's all about to change. What he doesn't know is that a menacing stalker has insinuated himself into Cynthia's life.
Suggested Reading: Cops
Updated 7/6/00 - The Big Mango
Author: Kelley, Norman
Publisher: Akashic $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1888451106 Date: 2000
PW
Picking up where Black Heat, the first installment of the Nina Halligan trilogy, left off, The Big Mango takes the reader to the tropical island-nation of Misericordia. A recent popular uprising, led by local folk hero, Father Pierre-Pierre Bernard, provided the island's poor mulatto masses with a rare moment of freedom. Less skilled in making decisions than in weighing the merits of each position, "the Hamlet of the Caribbean" cowered in the face of the harsh realities of political life on the island and was soon deposed to exile in the U.S. by a right-wing military coup. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9/21/00 - Bottoms
Author: Lansdale, Joe R.
Publisher: Mysterious $ 24.95 ISBN: 0892967048 Date: 2000
Booklist
The talented voice of East Texas delivers a riveting, poignant, and suspenseful tale of a Depression-era serial murder seen through the eyes of a young boy.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
Updated 6/29/00 - Sugar House: Tess Monaghan
Author: Lippman, Laura
Publisher: Avon $ 24 ISBN: 0380978172 Date: 2000
Kirkus
After killing a teenage girl, a glue-sniffing boy barely spends a month in prison before he is killed, too. The boy's sister hires Tess to find out why. What Tess finds drags her down into a fetid and deadly swamp of power, dirty money, high-level political corruption, and sordid secrets.
Suggested Reading: Private Investigators
Updated 7/21/00 - Pagan Babies
Author: Leonard, Elmore
Publisher: Dell $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385333927 Date: 2000
Kirkus
PW
Following his bestselling Be Cool, Elmore Leonard offers a new hero so devilish he defies description. He's Father Terry Dunn, a survivor of the war in Rwanda--but is he really a priest? And when his new friend, an ex-con named Debbie, learns the bizarre truth about his past, she sells him on going in for a much bigger payoff than either could manage alone.
Updated 8/7/00 - The Vault
Author: Lovesey,
Peter
Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569472084 Date: 2000
PW
Kirkus
Peter Diamond investigates a murder at the house in Bath where Mary Shelley completed Frankenstein. It all begins when the skeleton of a hand turns up in the vault room and the skull is excavated. Solving this mystery will require Diamond's knowledge of history, 19th century art, and literature.
Updated 8/7/00 - The Malcontenta: A Kathy Kolla &
David Brock Mystery
Author: Maitland, Barry
Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559705272 Date: 2000
PW
Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock of Scotland Yard learn that spas are not always good for your health, especially if you're a target for murder.
Suggested Reading: British Police
Updated 7/6/00 - The PMS Outlaws
Author: McCrumb, Sharyn
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24 ISBN: 0345382315 Date: 2000
Kirkus
From bestselling author McCrumb comes the long-awaited sequel to the Agatha Award-winning If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him. McCrumb's genius for mirroring everyday life is once again on full display in an outrageous parable of modern mores, where beauty is the weapon and nobody is safe.
Updated 8/7/00 - Place of Execution
Author: McDermid,
Val
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312266324 Date: 2000
PW
When a 13-year-old girl vanishes from her insular village in 1963, a newly promoted inspector must face a murder with no body and an investigation filled with dead ends. Decades later, the inspector finds new information that threatens the very foundations of his existence.
Updated 9/14/00 - The Incumbent: A Washington Thriller
Author: McGrory, Brian
Publisher: Pocket $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743403509 Date: 2000
PW
In the bestselling tradition of Absolute Power and The Tenth Justice, a veteran Washington press insider delivers a timely, gripping first novel about an attempt on the president's life 12 days before the election.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction | Debuts
Updated 8/7/00 - Judgement in Death
Author: Robb, J.D.
Publisher: Berkley $ 7.50 (paper) ISBN: 0425176304 Date: 2000
PW
In this futuristic series combining mystery and suspense, police lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks down a cop killer to an underground criminal hellhole known as Purgatory. This club is the last chance for atonement--a place where one's fate depends on one's most intimate sins. By Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb.
Updated 8/17/00 - Street Level
Author: Truluck, Bob
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 031226626x Date: 2000
PW
Booklist
Duncan Sloan is a private eye who works when he feels like it. Now he's been hired to find an as-yet unborn baby in the grimy pockets of Orlando, Florida. What he discovers instead is the three murdered bodies of the mother's relatives. Now, he must find the bad guys or the killing will continue.
Suggested Reading: Private Investigators | Debuts
Updated 8/7/00
August
- The Body on the Beach: A Fethering
Mystery
Author: Brett, Simon
Publisher: Prime Crime $ 21.95 ISBN: 0425175006 Date: 2000
Booklist
When recent retiree Carole Seddon discovers a dead body on the beach of Fethering, an English seaside village, her sensible life becomes suddenly quite complicated. And with the help of her Bohemian neighbor, Jude, Carole finds a new purpose in life as a detective.
Updated 8/7/00 - The Bear and the Dragon
Author: Clancy, Tom
Publisher: Putnam $ 28.95 ISBN: 039914563x Date: 2000
PW
Newly elected in his own right, Jack Ryan has found that being president has gotten no easier. Domestic pitfalls await him at every turn, there's a revolution in Liberia, the Asian economy is going down the tubes, and now, in Moscow, someone has tried to take out the chairman of the the former KGB with a rocket-propelled grenade. Then, forces in China start moving ahead with a plan of truly audacious proportions. "When the door blows open and the shooting starts, nobody does it better than Tom Clancy". --"The Dallas Morning News".
Suggested Reading: Techno Thrillers
Updated 8/17/00 - Ship of the Damned
Author: David, James F.
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312872038 Date: 2000
PW
In a mesmerizing new psychological thriller, a modern warship with nuclear warheads has recently vanished in a green-gray mist over the North Atlantic on October 28, 1943, an event which spelled disaster for the members of the crew.
Suggested Reading: Supernatural Stars | Cross Genres
Updated 7/14/00 - Hammerhead Ranch Motel
Author: Dorsey, Tim
Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 068817837 Date: 2000
PW
Fanatical Florida folklorist Serge A. Stormes, the star wacko in the cast of crazies from Florida Roadkill, is back in a new novel featuring a dancing TV weather dog, two sex- and drug-crazed co-eds on the lam, and a shotgun-totin' grandma, among others, in a final showdown during a killer hurricane.
Suggested Reading: If You Like Carl Hiaasen | Florida Fiction
Updated 7/26/00 - A Smile on the Face
of the Tiger
Author: Estleman, Loren D.
Publisher: Mysterious $ 24.95 ISBN: 0892967064 Date: 2000
Booklist
PW
Detroit private eye Amos Walker investigates a deadly secret as old as World War II when he tracks down Eugene Booth, a crusty old writer hammering out a novel in a rustic motel cabin. When the writer winds up hanging from his own belt, Walker must discover the connection between the apparent suicide and the murder of Booth's wife 40 years before.
Suggested Reading: Private Investigators
Updated 8/7/00 - Ellipsis: A John Marshall Tanner Mystery
Author: Greenleaf, Stephen
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0684849550 Date: 2000
PW
A riveting new John Marshall Tanner thriller features murder and intrigue in the glamorous world of a mega-bestselling novelist. It's the kind of case the San Francisco P.I. doesn't usually accept: bodyguard to a world-famous writer, Chandelier Wells. But as he negotiates the complex turns of Chandelier's life, he is unaware that his own life is about to take a dramatic turn.
Suggested Reading: Private Investigators
Updated 6/7/00 - The Fifth Woman
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565845471 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Booklist
In an Algerian convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit. In Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. How are the deaths connected? It's up to Inspector Kurt Wallander to find out.
Suggested Reading: European Crime Fiction
Updated 7/25/00 - Wild Justice
Author: Margolin, Phillip
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060196246 Date: 2000
PW
When the severed heads of two women are found near a mass grave of long-missing bodies, all signs point toward one man: a surgeon with a history of violence and drug abuse. Then evidence amassed against him is overturned, the surgeon disappears, and the killings start again. "The scariest book I've read since Red Dragon. I couldn't put it down". --Michael Palmer, author of The Patient.
Updated 7/20/00 - Crisis Four
Author: McNab, Andy
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345428072 Date: 2000
PW
Crisis Four is the stunning sequel to the #1 British bestseller Remote Control by the veteran commando-turned-author whose true-to-life fictional accounts of special forces rip the lid off the super-secret world of terrorism and black ops.
Suggested Reading: Action & Adventure | Spy Girls
Updated 6/27/00 - Line in the Sand
Author: Seymour, Gerald
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0684854775 Date: 2000
PW
Just when he was beginning to feel safe, Frank Perry's past surfaces with a vengeance. Ten years ago, Perry made powerful enemies by spying for the British government on Iranian chemical and biological weapons installations. Now, Iran is exacting its revenge and dispatching its most deadly assassin to do the job.
Suggested Reading: Espionage
Updated 6/16/00 - A Citizen of the Country
Author: Smith, Sarah
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345433025 Date: 2000
Kirkus
In the ancient, bloody region of French Flanders looms Montfort castle, home of Count Andre du Monde, owner of a famous Parisian horror theater. To repair his fortunes, he marries an heiress. Then the Grand Necropolitan Theater is suddenly stricken with disasters.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars | Paris Stars | Shakespearean Stars
Updated 6/6/00 - Body of a Girl
Author: Stewart, Leah
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670891649 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Stewart's debut novel follows a young journalist investigating a murder case. What begins as routine reporting for novice Olivia Dale takes a perilous turn as she becomes strangely obsessed with the victim. Olivia finds herself drawn into the life the young woman left behind and deeply immersed in a dangerous world where her own life could be at stake.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 7/6/00 - True Justice
Author: Tanenbaum, Robert K.
Publisher: Pocket $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743405897 Date: 2000Kirkus
For Butch Karp, chief assistant district attorney for New York County, a nightmare begins with the discovery of a baby's body discarded with the city's refuse. The public is screaming for blood, and it's Karp's unpleasant job to deliver it by making an example of the newborn's troubled 15-year-old mother. For Butch and his wife, Marlene, things couldn't get any more tense until a shocking turn of events puts their teenaged daughter, Lucy, at the center of the horrifying crime.
Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
Updated 6/22/00 - The Office of the Dead
Author: Taylor, Andrew
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312203489 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Tracing the psychological development of a female serial killer, Taylor's Roth Trilogy moves to a cathedral city in the 1950s to explore disturbing links between past and present.
Suggested Reading: Serial Killers
Updated 6/22/00 - The Limits of Justice: Benjamin
Justice
Author: Wilson, John Morgan
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385491174 Date: 2000
Booklist
Hired by Charlotte Preston to write a rebuttal to a sleazy expos on her late father, journalist Benjamin Justice discovers Charlotte dead in her room with a needle in her arm. Determined to discover the truth, what Justice finds links an unlikely group of men to a history of twisted perversion and crimes almost too horrible to believe.
Excerpt
Updated 8/8/00
July
- The Silent Children
Author: Campbell, Ramsey
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312870566 Date: 2000
PW
Hector Woollie kills children, "liberating" them from "abusive" parents, and his next victims are Ian and Charlotte. Ian can hear his mother weeping right through the wall the duplex shares with the madman's hiding place. Yet if the children make so much a peep, Hector will slit their throats.
Suggested Reading: Serial Killers | Cross Genres
Updated 6/27/00 - The Sibyl in Her Grave
Author: Caudwell, Sarah
Publisher: Delacorte $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385299346 Date: 2000
Booklist
Library Journal
Aunt Regina and her friends seem to be connected to capital fraud--and capital crime. And when someone connected with Aunt Regina's equity investments turns up dead, things look even more dire. But Regina couldn't have a better champion than the erudite supersleuth Professor Hilary Tamar, who is determined to solve this murderous muddle before someone else is killed.
Suggested Reading: Traditional British
Updated 6/6/00 - After Life
Author: Ellis, Rhian
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670892424 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Evocative, suspenseful, and beautifully written, this debut women's thriller is set in a town called Train Line, in western-most New York, home to a community of mediums and spiritualists. In this environment, Naomi Ash comes of age and begins to distinguish what might be her own true vision from fakery and fraud.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Spiritualists
Updated 5/1/00 - The High Flyer
Author: Howatch, Susan
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375410570
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670892424
Kirkus
Once again, Howatch weaves together the ecclesiastical and the earthly in an electrifying story about a woman who begins to doubt the certainties of her life. A young lawyer in her 30s, Carter Graham seeks help at St. Benet's Healing Centre and sets out on a psychological and spiritual journey that will bring her to a startling understanding of her life.
Updated 5/1/00 - Kill Me Tender: A Murder Mystery
Featuring Elvis Presley
Author: Klein, Daniel
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 031226187x Date: 2000
PW
The King is back! With fan club presidents dying mysteriously, Elvis himself steps in to find their killer.
Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars | Elvis
Updated 5/26/00 - Listen to the Silence
Author: Muller, Marcia
Publisher: Mysterious $ 23.95 ISBN: 0892966890 Date: 2000
Booklist
Upon the death of her father, San Francisco-based PI Sharon McCone discovers she's adopted and is determined to find her biological parents. She journeys to Idaho's Flathead Reservation for answers but discovers some locals who will stop at nothing to keep certain secrets hidden.
Suggested Reading: Private Investigators
Updated 5/22/00 - Deadly Decisions
Author: Reichs, Kathy
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0684859718 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Emily Anne Toussant, nine years old, is shot dead on a Montreal street. A North Carolina teen disappears and parts of her skeleton are found hundreds of miles away. For forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, the deaths act as a catalyst, propelling her deep into the culture of outlaw motorcycle gangs where one misstep could bring disaster.
Suggested Reading: Crime Scene Investigations
Updated 6/6/00 - Raveling
Author: Smith, Peter Moore
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316442178 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Library Journal
In a stunning debut novel of psychological suspense, a man must uncover the secret of his sister's disappearance 20 years earlier, or lose his mind trying.
Suggested Reading: Cold Cases | Debuts
Updated 5/1/00
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