For years, absinthe was considered far more dangerous than most liquors. In fact, it was banned in both the United States and the EU for nearly a century due to its alleged hallucinogenic qualities. But in fact, it appears that the absinthe itself—the distilled spirit of wormwood—was not responsible for the problems faced by early drinkers. No, the blame would fall to adulterants in either the cheaper forms of the drink or in the mixers.

Today, absinthe can still be dangerous. Especially when mixed with stupidity. Or fire. Or both. A lesson a Russian bartender and patron learned to their combined shock and horror.

The Healer by Antti Tuomainen is a novel of dystopian, futuristic Nordic noir (available May 14, 2013).

Tapani Lehtinen’s wife, Johanna is missing. She’s a reporter and routinely goes out on assignment for days at a time, but always checks in with her husband, and it’s been twenty-four hours since he’s heard from her. After visiting her editor and expressing his concerns, the editor reluctantly tells him that she’s been working on a story about The Healer, a killer who’s been targeting families of high powered men involved in the seeming destruction of the environment, thus being part of the cause of the deteriorating climate of Helsinki and the surrounding areas. The editor is dubious that something bad has happened to Johanna, but seems to soften a bit when Tapani explains the nature of their relationship.

[The heat is on in Helsinki...]

Escapism is one of the appeals of the fantasy genre. It’s a chance to visit a world where impossible things like magic and monsters are real, and to go on epic quests to save the world. It can be just as fun and interesting though to see those elements bump up against real world events such as crime and murder. Generally you only see that collision in fantasy tales set in the modern worlds like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. There are a number of authors, though, who have combined the elements of crime and noir with stories set in mythical or ancient realms.

[Crime and Fantasy were made for each other!]

Double Whammy by Gretchen Archer is the first Davis Way Crime Caper novel, a humorous mystery set in Biloxi, Mississippi (available May 14, 2013).

Davis Way is divorced from her ex-ex-husband (so, yes, twice divorced from the same guy), unemployed because her father fired her, not getting along with her mother—which is par for the course, and frustrated. It doesn’t look like things can get much worse. After all, how many restraining orders can one girl face? 

Things start to look up when she finds a job at the Bellissimo, a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. The grand hotel offers a chance to start over, with a large paycheck and posh surroundings. After a gazillion interviews, Davis is hired to work undercover security, catching safe-cracking thieves and protecting the casino’s hard-earned gains. However, nothing in the Bellissimo is as straightforward or simple as it seems.

First off, the man who seems to be ripping off the Bellissimo’s biggest slot-game—the Double Whammy—is Davis’s ex-ex-husband.

[So nice she divorced him twice...]

At times, Britain’s chief export would seem to be well-crafted television shows in the suspense line. From across the pond, we’ve been given Prime Suspect, Public Enemies, Waking the Dead, and the recent Sherlock. Additionally, we have the mysteries of Inspectors Lewis, Lynley, and Luther (and even some inspectors whose names don’t start with L.)

In the midst of this British Invasion, one series that has perhaps fallen under the radar—despite its excellent writing, impressive acting, and intelligent approach—is the anthology series Accused. Created by Edgar Award-winning writer Jimmy McGovern, it ran two seasons from 2010 to 2012 on BBC for a total of ten hour-long episodes. The series won the International Emmy Award for Best Drama. The fact that it was short-lived (though not for lack of acclaim) makes for an easily consumable packet of probable causes.

[There’s always a story behind the story...]

When I was in high school, the British hard rock band Deep Purple scored a huge comeback hit with the song “Knocking at Your Back Door,” the lead single from their album Perfect Strangers. During the song, a man visits various women, from strippers to aristocrats, late at night and knocks at their back door per their invitation. Obviously, I thought at the time—it’s a song about sex, about illicit sex, maybe even a certain kind of illicit sex. I was a teenager. Every song was about sex. And pretty much all sex was illicit. I didn’t need much help getting there, especially listening to a song that actually used the phrase “cunning linguist.” Even those few ’80s songs that weren’t about sex sure sounded like it to me.

[Did your ears deceive you?]

Little Green by Walter Mosley marks the return of detective Easy Rawlins as he investigates the dark side of L.A.’s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip (available May 14, 2013).

Little Green by Walter Mosley at last brings back Easy Rawlins, this time from a near-death experience; that experience and the fallout from it is a major element of the novel. The story begins with a journey into mysticism that’s a far cry from the usual hard-boiled nature of the series, while still retaining a dark and bitter tone appropriate to it. Only gradually does the story enter the more familiar world of detective work.

Easy’s back, but he’s also changed; he’s feeling his mortality in ways he didn’t feel it before, and seeing the world changing around him.

[A near-death experience will do that to you...]

We here at Criminal Element are quite appreciative of a good heist tale. So if you have a crack team of criminals and con men that double as illusionists and magicians, you have our attention. Above are the first few minutes of the movie Now You See Me. Watch closely and see if you can spot the trick of the tricks. Also, what card did you pick?

Lucky Bastard by Deborah Coonts is the fourth in the Lucky O’Toole humorous traditional mystery series (available May 14, 2013).

If you’re looking for humor, glitz, and big money, you’ll truly enjoy the Lucky O’Toole Las Vegas series from Deborah Coonts. Lucky Bastard is the fourth book in a series that is funny, sexy, and features a damn good amateur sleuth. It’s been called Sex and the City meets Elmore Leonard. Not a bad description.

There’s no waiting for the action with Lucky Bastard, it opens with a grisly murder scene. A young woman has been left sprawled across the hood of a red Ferrari in the dealership inside Babylon, a top casino-resort in Las Vegas. Perhaps the saddest part of the display is that she was murdered with a stiletto attached to a beautiful red Jimmy Choo.

[What a fashion disaster!]

The process of converting an author’s literary vision and framing key plot points sometimes casually buried in the paragraphs or only hinted at by the writer is no mean feat and it’s a skill that can bring a whole new dimension to a story. It’s also a process that has given vivid life to some books, their cinematic elevation finding them a deserved readership they may never have enjoyed.

Rather than going for a top ten I tried to nail down my ultimate favourite and, after not much deliberation, I quickly settled on the one that, for me, sufficiently captures and delivers what I loved about the novel as well as augmenting the story with the sort of memorable cinematic flair that makes it worthy of repeat viewings.

[You tell us yours and we’ll tell you ours...]

Nursing a habit can lead to dangerous territory, especially when you’re smuggling drugs under said habits. On the Caribbean island of San Andres, three women were stopped by the police after they seemed to be acting...uncomfortable...in their nuns’ habits.

According to Huffington Post, Police Captain Oscar Davila said the three women appeared nervous, and the fabric of their clothing didn’t look right.

When police found more than four pounds of cocaine (two kilos) strapped to the legs of each woman, Davila says all three broke into tears and launched into tales of financial hardship.

The three had just come off a plane from Colombia and were arrested for trafficking. It’s certainly not the strangest way we’ve heard of trafficking drugs—there was the cannon-propelled weed and the meth disguised as Snickers to consider after all—but we can say fewer people will be nursing a habit thanks to this arrest.

Thrillers and mysteries have long been seen as split along gender lines, and for the first seventy years or so of the twentieth century, they actually were.  But things have been changing.

Thrillers were originally written by, for, and about men. The earliest thriller, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers published in 1903, had not a single female character initially until his publisher forced Childers to add one to the book. Until Ken Follett’s best-selling thriller, The Eye of the Needle, with its female protagonist in 1978, women were only occasional minor characters within thrillers, and the primary readers of thrillers were men. The thriller arose and became popular in the same time period as the western and the hard-boiled detective novel (which grafted the danger and violence of the thriller onto the mystery). All were parts of a male-oriented fiction with the shared elements of idealized male protagonists braving physical danger and escalating threat that built to cathartic endings of explosive violence.

Mysteries, on the other hand, have always had female readers and writers from Louisa May Alcott in the 1860s and her British counterparts, such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, to Anna Katharine Green in 1878 with the first American best seller of any kind and on into the Golden Age with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Mignon G. Eberhart, Helen McCloy, Margaret Millar, and many others down to the present moment.

[He read, she read...]

Carved in Darkness by Maegan Beaumont involves a serial killer-rapist, his victim, and her fight to make him pay for his brutal crimes (available May 8, 2013).

The first chapter of this book is very graphic and contains triggers that may bother some readers (the synopsis tells you what you’ll find there). Beyond chapter one, however, the book is highly suspenseful and will keep you reading to the end, even if you skip that first chapter.

Sabrina Vaughn isn’t who she says she is, or at least she wasn’t fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, she was Melissa Walker, but Melissa died at the hands of a serial killer who raped and tortured her for eighty-three days before leaving her body on the grounds of a church. Melissa doesn’t exist anymore except in pieces. Little things like the way Sabrina ties her boots. A few mementoes in a box. A ring on a chain around Sabrina’s neck.

[Girl, reimagined...]

Recently, ABC News did a piece on Where Notorious Criminals Have Been Buried. Osama Bin Laden, Ted Bundy, Hitler, the Columbine shooters, Adam Lanza, Timothy McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald, Pol Pot...those whose crimes (or, in their fans’ views, heroism) make their final resting places targets for all kinds of mayhem create unique problems for their families and officials. But despite the intrigue in all the stories, the most interesting was that of Jeffrey Dahmer:

Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate while serving life prison sentences in 1994. ... After Dahmer’s death, his brain was kept in formaldehyde in the state pathologist’s office while his divorced parents disagreed over what to do with it. His mother, Joyce Flint, wanted the brain studied to determine whether biological factors were behind her son’s homicidal behavior, which included necrophilia and cannibalism.

His father, Lionel Dahmer, favored cremation, saying that is what his son wanted. Eventually, Jeffery Dahmer’s brain and body were cremated and the ashes were divided between his mother and father after a judge decided the brain should be cremated.

What do you think? Would studying the brain of a killer after his death lead to any answers?

The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis is a new mystery by the author of the Marcus Didius Falco series, set in ancient Rome and featuring a no-nonsense investigator who just happens to be a woman (available June 11, 2013).

A woman PI (informer, to use the period parlance) on the mean streets of ancient Rome. That’s the one-line summary, but what Lindsey Davis gives us with this kick-off of a brand new series is much more than that.

Flavia Albia is hard-boiled (something the Stargazer bar can actually manage to do correctly) and taking on cases that no one else will touch in a city that is steeped in its own corruption and mistrust.

[The mean streets of Rome...]

Mirror Image by Ice-T and Jorge Hinojosa is the second in the Kings of Vice noir thriller series (available May 7, 2013).

Celebrity authors.

Do you secretly roll your eyes when you see a celebrity’s name on the cover of a novel? Do you expect the book to be snark-bait along the lines of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s beach-read The Shore Thing? Are you more or less skeptical when you see a co-author’s name? (And if you’re more skeptical, how do you feel about all those books James Patterson co-authors with people you never heard of?)

Let’s be honest. We probably would not be sitting here talking about Mirror Image if it were just the second novel by a 55-year-old Jersey guy named Tracy Marrow co-written by his good friend and business partner.

Or maybe we would.

[Here’s why...]

Silken Prey by John Sandford places Lucas Davenport in the midst of a political scandal with deadly consequences (available May 7, 2013).

I have to tell you up front—I love John Sandford. I’ve read everything he’s written and even looked up some of his newspaper stories. He’s a gifted, eloquent writer who grabs me every time with his books.

I’ve had a longtime love for Lucas Davenport. He’s just about the coolest character I know, and I’ve come to know him so well I feel I’d recognize him if I passed him on the street. He’s a dedicated, hard-nosed cop to the core, and he’s like a pit bull that can’t let go of a bone when he gets the bad guy in his sights.

Silken Prey continues the story of Lucas and the wonderful friends and coworkers who make up his world. I’m always thrilled when Lucas and Virgil Flowers, one of his BCA agents featured in another Sandford series, work together, but in this book he also reconnects with Kidd, the famous artist and computer whiz. Then there are the usual suspects—Del, Jenkins, and Shrake who are joined by two female BCA agents we meet for the first time. So many good characters I put off reading the last page because I didn’t want the story to end.

[Hanging on to every word...]

If you haven't yet been introduced to Charles Ramsey, he's a Clevelander who helped rescue women who had been held in captivity in a neighbor's house for a decade after being kidnapped as teenagers. He heard Amanda Berry's cries, helped her break out of the home's door and call 9-1-1. Also rescued was kidnap victim Gina DeJesus and a third woman, another missing local named Michelle Knight. Berry had a young daughter with her, and there were apparently other children in the home. Seeing people freed from horrors and returned to their families is heart-warming enough, but the funny way this regular-guy-turned-hero explains how he got involved, well that's just the cherry on top of a sundae of awesome.

More info at NewsNet5

Foal Play by Kathryn O’Sullivan, a murder mystery with humorous overtones, won the Malice Domestic competition for Best First Traditional Mystery Novel (available May 7, 2013).

It’s summertime in Corolla, North Carolina, and Colleen McCabe is the fire chief of this small resort town. She inhabits a mostly man’s world in her profession, but has managed to win over her team with her professionalism and skill. She and her Border Collie Sparky try to keep things under control, even in the height of tourist season.

This idyllic town in the Outer Banks comes complete with a wild horse refuge that is home to a herd of Spanish mustangs. The refuge is meant to keep them safe from tourists and other dangers. This is definitely harder to do when the horses break through the fences to mix with the population.

[Everything’s beachy until the dead bodies start turning up...]

Original Skin by David Mark, the follow-up to The Dark Winter, is a gritty police procedural set in the north of England (available May 16, 2013).

Original Skin is the second novel in the Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy series set in Hull, a historic port city that has seen more than its fair share of violent crime. Hull is currently overrun with Vietnamese drug lords, a seedy sexual underbelly, and itinerant “travellers.” So when McAvoy stumbles onto evidence that the suicide of a young “swinger” may in fact be a murder, it’s not really a surprise the case is not placed front and center.

McAvoy investigates the death of Simon Appleyard—the “suicide”—on the quiet, while still working his regular caseload. As he pulls at the loose threads of the suicide theory, he finds more than he bargained for. Government officials are affected. Corruption within the police force is exposed. Innocent bystanders are caught in the crossfire of sexual cover-ups. And the killer isn’t done yet.

[Why stop at one?]