Red Handed by Matt Kindt is an artistic graphic novel and so much more (available May 7, 2013).

Red Wheel Barrow is your average American city except for one significant trait: none of their crimes go unsolved. While this seems to have had no effect on the crime rate, the good people of Red Wheel Barrow can rest assured that hometown hero, Detective Gould, will swiftly bring any evil-doers to justice. With his embrace of technology, an established network of eyes and ears on the ground as well as his own fine deductive skills, Gould is commonly lauded by the townsfolk as the greatest detective since Sherlock Holmes.

[But nothing so good can last forever]

Mind MGMT Vol 1: The Manager , written and illustrated by Matt Kindt, begins an espionage series involving mind control and government conspiracy (available April 23, 2013).

There is no such thing as magic: there is only mind over matter. This is the basic premise behind Mind MGMT, a trade paperback centered around the activities of a quasi-governmental agency devoted to using the power of the mind to fight its battles, physical or otherwise. Its operatives are capable of amazing feats, as true-crime writer Meru Marlow discovers in her quest to uncover the truth behind the so-called Amnesia Flight, a plane on which 119 of the 121 people aboard completely forgot their pasts mid-flight. The only people unaffected were a 7-year-old boy and Henry Lyme, a passenger who seemed to promptly disappear upon landing.

Meru herself has struggled to write another book since the publication of her initial bestseller two years ago. She’s running out of money despite living in a small town, and is desperate to make amends to the people she knows she’s letting down with her prolonged inability to write.

[Some things you just can’t forget...]

Mumbai Confidential Book 1: Good Cop, Bad Cop by Saurav Mohapatra and Vivek Shinde is a hard-boiled graphic novel set in Mumbai (available April 23, 2013).

Hard-boiled crime fiction the world over, whether it’s set in Los Angeles or Mumbai, Moscow or Tokyo, poses the same basic question to the reader: who can you trust in a world teeming with corruption and evil? How can you tell the good cops from the bad cops, the good guys from the bad guys?

This graphic novel, collecting the main story with three shorter interludes at the end, plumbs the moral depths of what it means to be a villain. The end result is a book that leaves you sadder at, and maybe a little bit wiser about, the human condition, and the lengths we’ll go to in order not only to survive but to find satisfaction with what we’ve done.

[Can’t get no satisfaction...]

Fool Moon, Volume 2, by Jim Butcher is a graphic novel adaptation of the second novel in the Harry Dresden series (available April 23, 2013).

Jim Butcher is the author of a wildly popular paranormal crime series called The Dresden Files, which features Harry Dresden, wizard and private eye. As with other popular titles in the genre (notably the Anita Blake series), it was almost inevitable that the cinematic qualities of the novels be translated to comics form and, for a while, to a series on Syfy.

Dynamite Comics has worked with Jim Butcher to present a faithful rendering of Fool Moon, the second book of The Dresden Files. This volume collects issues five to eight, with a precis at the beginning to catch up readers on what occurred in the first four issues. Dresden has found himself losing allies left and right as at least three groups of werewolves—all with their own carefully delineated and unique origins—have taken to the streets of Chicago. Enter a powerful mobster and a team of FBI agents, all with an interest in him too, and Dresden soon finds himself hunted at all turns, especially since he’s lost the trust of his only ally in the police department, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy.

[That’s no good...]

Dirty Little Secret by Jon Stock is the third espionage thriller featuring renegade MI-6 agent Daniel Marchant (available March 26, 2013).

Daniel Marchant has been through hell and high water while working to protect his country, Great Britain, from its foreign foes. As a spy in the service of MI-6, he has followed in his father’s footsteps to places and situations that he’d never imagined, including facing down his own half-brother, Salim Dhar, who has grown up to become one of the world’s most notorious terrorists. Marchant’s ability to persuade Dhar to limit the damage on his latest bold attack on British soil—while still incurring military losses to the Americans—has done nothing to secure the now-fraught relationship between Britain and America, much to the concern of MI-6 Chief, Marcus Fielding.

These latest developments were beginning to remind him of the 1960s, when relations between Britain and America had been at an all-time low. Fielding had been re-reading the files, hoping to learn lessons from the past. Washington, still reeling from Kim Philby’s defection, had been appalled at the election in 1964 of Harold Wilson, whose Labour government was against the US’s Polaris nuclear-missile program. President Johnson was equally suspicious of Britain’s intelligence establishment, believing that it was still riddled with Soviet spies.

[Uh oh, not the Soviets!...]

Rage Against the Dying  by Becky Masterman is a debut thriller featuring a former FBI agent who has retired to Arizona, but hasn’t been able to leave her job behind (available March 12, 2013).

Brigid Quinn is a tough-talking former FBI agent, forced into retirement after fatally shooting an unarmed perp. She’s haunted still by the greatest unsolved case of her career: that of the Route 66 serial killer whose last known victim was Quinn’s protegee, a promising young agent named Jessica Robertson. No longer a fed, Quinn keeps busy by geode-hunting in the Arizona desert and compulsively hiding any trace of her former professional pursuits from her beloved new husband, Carlo. Burned by disastrous past relationships with civilians, she is paranoid that finding out about her close involvement with death will push Carlo away from her.

The sight of [Carlo] fixing the feeder for my pleasure made my heart... swell to overflowing is supposed to be a worn-out phrase, but for me it’s a brand-new feeling.

This may seem an unusually strong reaction to a man filling a bird feeder. If you have led a relatively peaceful life you will not appreciate its value and treasure it the way I do, not understand what it feels like to go day after day with that vibration in your chest, as if you carried inside of you a violin string that has just been plucked but now the string is silent and still because the threat of violence is long past.

Now I was living in peace with a man so gentle and sensitive he gave sup to hummingbirds. Does this seem precious? I don’t give a rat’s ass.

[We like a gal who speaks her mind...]

The Family Way by Rhys Bowen, the newest book in the Molly Murphy historical mystery series, puts Molly on the trail of a missing servant (available March 5, 2013).

The 12th book in the award-winning Molly Murphy mystery series finds Molly happily married and heavily pregnant but also incredibly bored. It is the summer of 1905 and married life hasn’t been as exciting as she’d hoped, especially after giving up her detective agency for it.

Her husband, Daniel, is a police captain but refuses to share any information about his cases with her, much less allow her to help. In fact, he wants her to hire a servant to help with the house in the face of her impending delivery, but cooking and cleaning their small residence are about all she has to look forward to with her bohemian neighbors, Sid and Gus, having already escaped the stultifying heat by leaving town for cooler pastures. Daniel suggests that she ask his mother for servant recommendations anyway or, better yet, leave the city to stay with her in the countryside. Molly has little wish to spend time in the presence of a mother-in-law who has sighed more than once that Daniel could have married so much better than an unconnected, dowry-free Irish immigrant, so she compromises, saying she’ll look into the servant idea.

[Compromise always seems like a good idea...]

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason is a thriller with a twist and a macabre sense of humor (available February 12, 2013).

Three Graves Full is a crime novel that begins with a twist. Our protagonist, Jason Getty, spends the opening chapter getting over the fact that he’s killed a man and buried the corpse at the edge of his property. Just when he thinks he’s learning to live with his horrible, unpunished crime, the landscaping crew that he’s hired to do a little yard work closer to the house makes a horrific discovery, unearthing two more dead bodies that Jason had absolutely nothing to do with. The police are called in, and Jason begins to sweat his own secret murder. The investigation that follows draws in Leah Tamblin, fiancee of the dead man Jason didn’t kill, and Boyd Montgomery, a man trying to outsmart his past. The house with three graves and a multitude of secrets exerts an irresistible attraction to all three, resulting in one climactic night of mayhem and tragedy for them and for the investigators involved.

[What will they dig up next?]

Bad Medicine Volume 1: New Moon by Nunzio deFilippis and Christina Weir is a paranormal police procedural/medical thriller graphic novel (available January 30, 2013).

This graphic novel is split into two parts, following the exploits of a diverse inter-agency team as they investigate the involvement of biological agents in strange deaths reminiscent of classic monster movies. In the first half, a seemingly headless corpse is discovered in Brooklyn. When hard-nosed NYPD Detective Joely Huffman tries to get a closer look at the body, though, she discovers to her surprise that she’s accidentally kicked it in its invisible head.

Despite the lack of a face, the deceased is quickly identified as the lab assistant to a Dr. Keefer, who has suddenly gone missing with all his research notes. The only clue the NYPD has left from the lab is a note mentioning a consultation with a Dr. Randal Horne. Huffman leaves a message with his answering service, but can find only one person who has any idea where Horne might actually be. A former colleague, Dr. James Lucas, is more than happy to brief her on Horne’s background, but she has more immediate concerns:

[Sounds like it’s time to face the facts...]

I’ve always been an indiscriminate reader. Growing up, I wasn’t surrounded with a wealth of reading material so I read whatever I could lay my hands on. I never had the luxury of considering myself a genre reader or even the inclination: satisfying the urge to read, no matter what the material, was paramount. And so I enjoyed a wide range of content, never developing a real favorite, till I turned 14, discovered Agatha Christie and became a die-hard fan of the genre her writing exemplifies.

I had, of course, enjoyed mysteries before then: what English-reading child of the late 20th century hasn’t read a Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Famous Five? But I enjoyed these books as I enjoyed any other quality series, as dependable sources of entertainment. In addition, they provided tidy conclusions to seemingly difficult problems, allowing me the same pleasure I found in mathematics. I could not claim either to be a favorite subject, though, as I felt little emotional investment. Worse, when I was 9, I first encountered Sherlock Holmes and found the entire experience disappointing. The detective’s personality was tedious and the outcomes of his investigations unlikely. (If you have to make up an animal as a vector for murder then, to my young mind, you have failed an essential test of logic.) This, I thought, meant that I hadn’t the necessary stuff to be a true crime fiction fan, if I could care so little for one of the proclaimed eminences of the field.

[You’ve got the right stuff!]

Sacrifice Fly by Tim O’Mara is a traditional mystery featuring a former New York City cop turned middle school teacher as he tries to find the killer of a student’s father (available October 16, 2012).

I went into reading this novel expecting that, with a title like Sacrifice Fly, there would be a lot of baseball involved. As a sports fan, I was both intrigued and concerned: would Tim O’Mara be able to incorporate America’s national pastime into his murder mystery without alienating those to whom RBI and ERA are just meaningless collections of letters?

Fortunately for the uninitiated, baseball doesn’t play too central a role in this story, instead serving to enhance what’s essentially a sober, thoughtfully paced consideration of life in the less affluent parts of New York City. Baseball is part of the reason why Raymond Donne, a middle school teacher, goes in search of his pupil, Frankie Rivas, whose continued absence from school jeopardizes a scholarship Frankie has earned because of his ability on the diamond.

[A baseball mystery just in time for the postseason . . .]

Sailor Twain: or, the Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel is a graphic novel from First Second Press that collects the installments originally published at SailorTwain.com (available October 2, 2012).

Set in 1887 New York, it opens with a cloaked woman finally tracking down the title character to a waterfront dive. He doesn’t want to talk to her, but she offers him a mysterious amulet in exchange for his story about what really happened to a man now dead. Reluctantly, Sailor Twain agrees to relate the chain of events that began to unspool the day he rescued a mermaid from the Hudson River.

[A mermaid’s tale . . .]

Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis is the second Nina Borg nordic mystery set in Denmark (available October 2, 2012).

When I saw that this book had finally come on the market, I leapt at the chance to read it. I loved the first novel in the Nina Borg series, The Boy In The Suitcase, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel. And I wasn’t disappointed: while it’s hard to top an excellent debut, Invisible Murder continues in the fine tradition set by its predecessor, presenting a socially conscious thriller that is high on both suspense and the compassion that elevates this series above the rest of the field.

[How is murder invisible?]

The Incense Game by Laura Joh Rowland is the 16th book in the Sano Ichiro series. Set in feudal Japan, it follows the career of a samurai who struggles with the conflict between his adherence to the code of Bushido and his personal sense of integrity (available September 18, 2012).

With this series, Laura Joh Rowland has successfully created an original meld of two genres, combining hardboiled mystery with the period piece (it’s okay to be skeptical: I was once, too.) As The Incense Game begins, Sano has risen to one of the most powerful positions in the land, far distant from where he was 14 years ago, when he was merely a minor functionary determined to pursue the truth behind a suspicious ritual suicide no matter what the cost.

[But promotion hasn’t changed his essential personality . . .]

Blades of Winter by G.T. Almasi is the first in the Shadowstorm series, an action-packed thriller revolving around genetically enhanced spies in a reimagined version of the Cold War (available August 28, 2012).

Blades Of Winter is G.T. Almasi’s debut novel, and promises to be the first in a series of exciting, action-packed thrillers revolving around hot-headed superspy Alix Nico. Set in an alternate history in which Germany conquered Western Europe with ease during World War II, this novel extrapolates to the 1980s where, instead of engaging in a Cold War, the world’s four superpowers (the United States, Germany, Russia, and China) use surgically enhanced and modified secret agents to advance their interests in what’s been termed a Shadowstorm. Alix is one of these agents, following in the footsteps of a father who was reportedly killed in action eight years before the novel picks up her narrative.

Alix is a prodigy, the result of natural genetic talent and a determination to carry on the legacy of the father she worshipped. At the age of nineteen, she’s raring to prove herself, bilking less intelligent co-workers into sending her out on missions far above her Level, as her Extreme Operations agent rating is called. She’s cocky, witty, and consistently overestimates her understanding of the rules.

[She sounds like the best kind of trouble . . .]

The Occultist, a graphic novel by Tim Seeley and Victor Drujiniu, is a combination urban fantasy and thriller (available July 31, 2012).

The first volume of The Occultist collects the first five stories Dark Horse Comics published about their titular character, arranging them in a format that’s accessible to the new reader. The Occultist himself is a young man with a troubled background who unwittingly finds himself the receptacle of great power and responsibility.

Chosen by a mystical Book to be the wielder and embodiment of a Sword that fights the demonic and undead. Robert Bailey, a fairly average college student, suddenly finds himself in command of powers he doesn’t fully understand, though the Book and a ghostly mentor do their best to guide him through. Granted, said mentor isn’t the most knowledgeable chap when it comes to the Sword’s occult abilities, but he does understand the power of books and learning, offering up solid advice such as this when Robert is near tearing his hair out in frustration at not being able to find the answers he wants in the Book that chose him:

“You keep asking for facts, and you want ’em delivered in nice clean sentences with clear wording. But sometimes it isn’t about what the Book literally says. Sometimes it’s about what the Book means.”

[Makes me feel like I’m back in high school English class . . .]

Fire Season by Jon Loomis is the third book in the police procedural series featuring reluctant interim police chief Frank Coffin (available July 17, 2012).

Until a replacement can be found, Frank Coffin is pulling double duty as a detective and interim police chief for the Provincetown, Massachusetts, police force. Luckily, the off-season has just started for this tourist town, and Frank hopes the quiet streets will allow him more time to stay at home and take care of his very pregnant girlfriend.

When Frank responds to a call about—of all things—the murder of some local seals, and immediately afterward has to investigate a Dumpster fire, he starts losing hope that this off-season will provide any downtime at all. As several more increasingly large and dangerous fires are sparked in quick succession, it seems there’s a firebug on the loose. Finding a way to catch a man who burns all evidence of his crimes would give Frank enough to worry about, but with his deputy terrified that UFOs are real, a severed head found floating in a local bar’s lobster tank, his mother setting fires of her own, and a girlfriend with bizarre midnight cravings, Frank is up to his eyeballs in the criminal machinations and colorful antics of P’town’s eccentric residents.

It’s not often that you find a solid police procedural couched in dialog that makes you laugh out loud every few pages, but Fire Season by Jon Loomis is just that. Loomis leavens the criminal—and sometimes tragic—events he writes of with snappy patter and the occasional dose of absurdity.

[And let’s face it, sometimes life can be pretty absurd...]