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...]

Night Terrors by Dennis Palumbo is the third novel in the series featuring Pittsburgh-based psychotherapist Daniel Rinaldi (available May 7, 2013).

Once again, psychotherapist Daniel Rinaldi has been called in to consult with the police. This time it’s in Wheeling, West Virginia, where a guy has killed a local businessman, but will only lead detectives to the body if Rinaldi rides along. No sooner does he get back from Wheeling than FBI agent Alcott shows up, reluctantly asking for Rinaldi’s help with retired agent Lyle Barnes, whose years as a profiler have apparently taken their toll. To complicate matters, Barnes might be on a hit list related to the case of a small-time serial killer with a lone, angry fan. And, oh yeah, he has no intention of sitting around a hotel room like a sap when he can’t even get a decent night’s sleep.

Now, Rinaldi’s a likeable guy for the most part. He may have a hero complex and get himself into more trouble than his cop friends and enemies would like. Well, “enemies” might be a slight misnomer since about the only ones who don’t seem to think he’s charming are the stressed-out cops and agents who don’t care for “shrinks.”

[He has a way of getting inside your head...]

The Devil in Her Way is the second Maureen Coughlin novel from Bill Loehfelm, a follow-up to The Devil She Knows (available April 30, 2013).

Maureen, the plucky waitress from The Devil She Knows, has a new job in a new city and is ready to put her past behind her for good. As a rookie cop in New Orleans, Maureen is rebuilding, recreating herself after the events of The Devil She Knows, and she finds New Orleans is still, all these years later, pulling itself together after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction and the wave of corruption that plagued the city before and after.

Researching other opportunities, she discovered that New Orleans, flush with federal grand money, was announcing its first academy class in three years. She started reading about the city and the police department in the online version of the New Orleans newspaper. Even six years after Katrina, she kept seeing words like remake, recover, and rebirth—things she wanted and needed for herself. A new, reform-minded police commissioner had rolled into town not long ago and now sat at the right hand of a popular mayor. Firings, forced retirements, and indictments battered the department. Cops going to jail every month it seemed. All the scandal only heightened her attraction. She saw opportunity in it. She applied. She got in, with an offer of a city job until her academy class filled up. Just as she’d suspected, the NOPD was hot for fresh blood, eager to recruit from beyond the city and the state. And then all that was left to do was fire her therapist, pack the car, and kiss her mom goodbye.

[Let the good times roll...]

Scare Me by Richard Parker is a thriller that begins in a virtual Internet environment and leads to a very real threat to a businessman’s family (available April 30, 2013).

Scare Me is a stand-alone thriller by Richard Parker, whose previous book, Stop Me, also featured kidnap victims, ticking clocks, and technology. Another thing Scare Me has a lot of are fluids: pools of blood, a warehouse of chicken excrement, sweat, vomit, sex... And the pools and pores and poultry are colliding in a messy and terrifying way for William Frost and his wife, Carla, who just celebrated their nineteenth anniversary and expect to start the next year with the return of their pregnant daughter, Libby, and her boyfriend Luke, from vacation abroad.

Instead, Will wakes up to a nightmare on the Internet that sends him racing around the globe in an effort to save Libby before time runs out.

[Tick...tick...tick...]

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha is a debut novel in which a young amateur sleuth finds that the streets of L.A. haven’t changed much since her hero Philip Marlowe was walking them (available April 16, 2013).

In the debut novel from Steph Cha, Juniper Song—just Song to her friends—is on her way to her friend Luke’s party. It’s Friday night and she plans to wake up hung over. Instead, she wakes up on a bench with a dead guy in her trunk.

Here’s the issue: Luke’s a little worried about his dad maybe cheating with Lori, a pretty young Korean-American girl from dad’s law office. And Song’s always has a fascination with old Raymond Chandler novels and would like to fancy herself a modern-day Philip Marlowe (minus the job and dames and gun), so he thinks she’d be perfect for poking her nose into his father’s love life. It sounds innocent enough. Take drunken Lori home, ask a few questions about her fancy new purse, maybe follow her a bit. Eh, not so much.

[Good Luck, My Lovely...]

Braking Points by Tammy Kaehler, the second book in the Kate Reilly racing mystery series (available April 2, 2013).

Kate Reilly loves her job. As an American Le Mans Series (ALMS) racecar driver on a team with a driver she respects and an owner who’s tough but fair, she feels like she’s finally getting her chance. She even has a new and coveted sponsor. On the track, though, anything can happen and heading into a turn, she tangles with well-liked NASCAR driver Miles Hansen in a wreck that sends him to the hospital and ends his season.

Suddenly, she’s the villain of the racing world, is being taunted and criticized online, and verbally attacked in public. Granted, calling Hansen’s fan club president a “redneck” on air didn’t help matters. Having gotten her seat after another driver died isn't exactly suspicion-free either.

And then, what should have been a pleasant reunion of three old racing friends turns deadly when her boyfriend finds her former friend dead behind the Tavern. Did someone murder Ellie? Were they really out to get Kate? Will the blogs ever find someone new to harangue? Will she lose her seat to another driver at the end of the season? Is someone really trying to kill her or just make her look bad?

[It's a fatal question...]

Blood, Ash & Bone by Tina Whittle is the third book in the Tai Randolph traditional mystery series (available March 5, 2013).

While this is the third book in Tina Whittle’s Tai Randolph series, reading the others first isn’t necessary. If you have read the others, rest assured that just because Tai promises Trey she’ll stay out of trouble doesn’t mean she won’t find some and won’t convince him to come along for the ride.

Trey is an interesting character. Former cop, former SWAT, former sniper, he’s built and trained to be the action hero sort, but he’s a math geek at heart and a brain injury has left him more comfortable with routine and predictable calculations. He’s the perfect counterpoint to Tai, who is unpredictable, headstrong, messy, and reckless. In fact, their relationship was probably my favorite part of the book—and I’m not a big romance fan. There was something about the way they were adapting to being a couple that was both realistic and sweet.

[A little something sweet always makes the mystery better!]

Black Irish by Stephan Talty is a police procedural involving sadistic killings in the Irish-American community of Buffalo, New York (available February 26, 2013).

In Black Irish, the debut novel by best-selling nonfiction writer Stephan Talty, a killer is torturing men in the working-class, Irish-American neighborhood known as “The County,” leaving them in forgotten places with a worn old toy monkey.

Absalom “Abbie” Kearny has returned to Buffalo, to the neighborhood she once called home, to care for her aging father and to try to overcome the failures she felt plagued her in Miami. With a Harvard degree and a detective’s shield—measures of external success anywhere else—she feels disconnected, both from the community that’s always mistrusted outsiders and her adoptive father who always kept his distance even when she followed in his footsteps.

Meanwhile someone or something is haunting The County, killing off men in gruesome ways. The residents, usually quick to mete out justice on their own, can’t find, or are too afraid to look for, the murderer. And the more Abbie digs the more she suspects the deaths are connected to the local social club, the one her father brought her to as a child. The same social club that may or may not have decades-old connections to the IRA and the guns, drugs, and violence they brought with them from Ireland.

[Keep digging and you’ll dig up something nasty...]

Snowing? Sleeting? Has it warmed up to the the upper thirties? (Or, you know, not-quite-four degrees for you Celsius types.) Wearing a scarf? Wearing pants? You need to get in a Florida state of mind. (Seriously, we could use the tourist dollars.) But, if you don’t have the money to fly to Miami, you can still soak up the sunshine with some more Florida-based crime fiction.

Belly up to the bar in a Sherri Travis mystery and order yourself something with an umbrella and too much rum. So far, Phyllis Smallman has served up five novels and a novella, starting with Margarita Nights, described as a “cozy with grit.” Think a young Stella Hardesty/Stephanie Plum mixture washed up in the lower Keys.

Need your humor with less liquor and more pills off the bathroom floor? Tim Dorsey’s got some Florida Roadkill to share, along with 14 or 15 other books featuring serial killer and Floridaphile Serge Storms (depending on how you count the holiday-themed When Elves Attack...). If you like Carl Hiaasen, you’ll probably like Dorsey as they share a sense of manic absurdity that one may only be able to acquire working as a reporter for a Florida newspaper. Which, might explain the three criminally insane novels about inept criminals and low-lifes from former Miami Herald columnist, Dave Barry. His latest, Insane City, as well as Dorsey’s newest, The Riptide Ultra-Glide, came out in  January.

[Pass me my sunscreen would ya?]

The Rendition by Albert Ashforth is a novel of international espionage and intrigue (available October 2, 2012).­

The job is a rendition—basically a secret government kidnapping of someone somebody else thinks is important or dangerous, keeping secrets or a threat. Someone like the underground leader of a revolutionary group who may become a cabinet member and might also have committed some war crimes.

Alex Klear has run renditions before. He’s just not so sure he wants to do it again. If nothing else, he’s sure the law of averages will catch up with him eventually. So, when the mission in Kosovo goes badly, he’s more than willing to quit altogether. Retired. Done.

[Famous last words . . .]

Mark of the Witch by Maggie Shayne is a novel of paranormal romantic suspense (available September 18, 2012).

Witchcraft—the traditional sort, the sort that once got people burned or drowned or pressed to death—is at root of this book, which makes for a highly unusual suspense plot.

Indira Simons gave up witchcraft. For all her studies and spells, she wasn’t getting the one thing she wanted, and lost her faith. That was before the nightmares started. Or she thought they were just nightmares. Which is, of course, the thing about witchcraft. If magic exists, what’s real and what isn’t? And if you can’t tell, mysteries become more mysterious.

[Witches and demons and magic, oh, my!]

The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm is the second in the Sam Thornton, Soul Collector paranormal crime series (available September 25, 2012).

If you remember Sam Thornton from Dead Harvest back in February, you know Heaven and Hell have been none too pleased with each other of late and that more than a few from both sides blame Soul Collector, Sam. Which means Sam has some very powerful—and sometimes scaly, squishy, and grotesque—reasons for keeping his nose clean, even if the nose is on a borrowed meatsuit.

The Wrong Goodbye, like its predecessor, works on two levels. It’s a fun adventure, a cross-country fantastical crime spree that fans of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and the TV show Supernatural will likely enjoy. It hits all the right notes as both a buddy comedy and a horror show. Between laughing at the oil tycoon and being skeeved out by the “Bug Man,” it’s great fun, even if you just read along the surface. Look, three words: demon opium den. You need more? Cross-dressing psychic using a demon as a piñata.

[Oh, yeah, we’re in . . .]

It’s been a dilemma for Michael Weston: blow up your home at the end of next year or pack up and get out now?

Burn Notice is getting to stay in Miami. They will not, however, be blowing up the convention center at season’s end. Or, at least, not in real life. In case you were worried by the recent hullabaloo surrounding the seventh season of the spy show—before it had even officially been picked up for a seventh season—worry no more.

If you didn’t realize there was hullabaloo, well . . . it’s Miami, baby. Our politicians like to give Chicago a run for the money in the fields of crazy and corruption.

It seems when Coconut Grove, the city in Miami-Dade County that actually serves as the production home of Burn Notice, first agreed to lease the waterfront convention center, people didn’t exactly expect the show to last. Or at the very least, to stay. And why not? South Florida in general is a pretty transient area and a show about a burned spy? Well, that could be picked up and moved anywhere, right? Besides, at the time, Miami had a bad habit of hosting a string of failed projects (Sins of the City, Maximum Bob, Lawless…) and had lost some of the luster of its Miami Vice days.

Of course, since then Dexter, CSI Miami, The Glades, and Burn Notice have all showcased the Magic City. Not to mention the string of recent reality shows like The Real Housewives of Miami, Miami Salvage Wars, and South Beach Tow along with movies like Rock of Ages, Step Up Revolution, and the upcoming Pain and Gain.

Which is not to say that the economy of South Florida is exactly booming, so when the locals in the film industry heard Coconut Grove might be ousting Burn Notice, they were understandably upset. Equally freaked were the local restaurants and shops that have been servicing the cast and crew all these years.

On the other hand, the old money and outdoor enthusiasts of Coconut Grove had been promised a waterfront park to replace the eyesore of an aging convention center and they were tired of waiting. Old money is historically unimpressed with Hollywood flash as it is, but having “burned-out cars, concrete and trailers” on its waterfront is unacceptable.

Coconut Grove tried to talk the production into moving to the Wynwood Arts district about seven or eight miles away, which is about half gentrified lofts and half decrepit warehouses, but producers said renovating the space over there would cost too much and they might as well move to Broward County or out of Florida altogether.

Renovation isn’t the only problem with moving, even to another spot in Miami-Dade. Bob Lemchen, the head of production for Fox Television Studios, told the Miami Herald “that the show is built around filming in Coconut Grove, and that scenes often feature local attractions, landmarks and restaurants.” And he’s right. Many of the show’s outdoor scenes are shot in and around Coconut Grove, including almost all the waterfront dock scenes at Dinner Key Marina.

Then City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff came up with the brilliant plan of offering the show another year’s lease if—and here’s where the Miami charm shows—they agreed to do all the convention center demolition, including carting away all the debris when they were done. Sarnoff suggested they write it into the end of the show.

Now, while anyone who’s seen Burn Notice might think they really are running a demolition crew given how often characters make and detonate explosives, film crews aren’t generally known for their  construction—or demolition—skills. Which is why, after chewing on this notion for a few days, producers came back with a more reasonable offer: paying slightly higher rent that will cover the cost of demolition when they leave. Sarnoff has supposedly agreed to this. Burn Notice is currently still filming season six, according to the Film Miami website.
 

Neliza Drew is a tofu-eating teacher and erratic reader with a soft spot for crime fiction. She lives in the heat and humidity of southern Florida with three cats and her adorable hubby. She listens to way too much music, writes often, and spends too much time on Twitter (@nelizadrew).

Read all posts by Neliza Drew on Criminal Element.

Hell or High Water by Joy Castro is a psychological suspense thriller set in post-Katrina New Orleans (available July 17, 2012).

Nola Céspedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, finally catches a break: an assignment to write her first full-length feature. While investigating her story, she also becomes fixated on the search for a missing tourist in the French Quarter. As Nola’s work leads her into a violent criminal underworld, she’s forced to face disturbing truths from her own past and is confronted with the question: In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what’s been broken?

In New Orleans lurk sexual offenders, approximately eight hundred of them, who blew off the radar during Katrina and never officially resurfaced. The article Nola Céspedes is writing is meant to examine this problem from all sides: Is rehabilitation effective? Does the registry law work? How can sex criminals settle back into a civilian life lifestyle once their neighbors have been alerted? How do the neighbors feel about the whole thing?

[And how do you find those who have slipped off the radar?]

A Fatal Debt by John Gapper is a psychological thriller set in the world of high finance (available June 26, 2012).

Ben Cowper, an attending psychiatrist at the prestigious New York–Episcopal Hospital, is stunned to learn the identity of the emergency patient he’s just been assigned to treat: Harry Shapiro, a Wall Street colossus and one of Episcopal’s most prominent donors.

The initial description of this book reminded me of an older anime called Monster, but aside from the idea of a well-meaning doctor’s life being drastically altered by a decision he makes about a rich patient in the ER, they are very different, though equally gripping, psychological thrillers.

[Can we ever know what sanity is?]

The Line Between Here and Gone by Andrea Kane is a new Forensic Instincts thriller (available June 26, 2012).

Amanda Gleason’s boyfriend, Paul Everett, was murdered—or at least that’s what the reports said. Her infant son is deathly sick and the one thing that might save him is a stem cell donation from his allegedly dead father. When a friend emails Amanda a photo of a man who looks just like the boy’s missing dad, she is overjoyed that there’s hope, though confused as to why he might have disappeared.

Enter the Forensic Instincts team, who she hires to find the truth—and hopefully her former lover. Casey Woods, the team’s leader, is a behaviorist who has worked with the FBI and NYPD. She’s also a dynamo who takes no guff, even from her FBI sometimes-boyfriend. Marc Devereaux is the former Navy SEAL who pushes legal boundaries and beats confessions out of uncooperative bad guys. Patrick Lynch, the former FBI agent, balances out Marc by being wholly committed to the rule of law, but not above exploiting contacts. Ryan McKay is the pretty-boy techno-wizard, entombed in his “lair” with servers galore. And his romantic foil, Claire Hedgleigh is an “intuitive” he likes to call “Claire-voyant.” Rounding out the team is Hero, the human-scent evidence dog who lives in the brownstone Casey calls both home and office.

[The dog’s the Hero . . .]

So you’re just catching on to the fun of The Glades? Here’s a quickie primer:

Jim Longworth (played by Matt Passmore) is a former Chicago detective who relocated to fictional Palm Glade, Florida, after a misunderstanding involving his boss’s wife. (Up until this season, this was explained in the opening credits.) He joined the Florida Department of Law Enforcement partly out of boredom (that hefty settlement from Illinois is supposed to explain how a homicide detective can afford a nice house on the water, I guess) and partly because likes what he does. Because the FDLE is a statewide organization, it gives the show more leeway with settings than if Jim worked for a single-city department and they take full advantage of it with episodes set on beaches, in psychic towns, and deep in the Everglades. Regional Director Manus (Michelle Hurd), Medical Examiner Carlos (Carlos Gomez), and Intern Daniel (Jordan Wall) make up his closest coworkers and put up with the brunt of his unorthodox, but successful, methods.

Of course, the main thing Jim’s been investigating the past two seasons has been Callie Cargill (Kiele Sanchez), a nurse at Palm Glade General. In the first season, Jim did a good job of charming his way into the lives of Callie and her son, Jeff (Uriah Shelton), despite some major obstacles—like Callie’s husband, who got released from prison early. She eventually filed for divorce only to find Jim being charmed by his visiting former partner from Chicago. To complicate matters further, easy-on-the-eyes Dr. Ben Avery reappeared with plans to close Palm Glade General and whisk Callie off to Atlanta where he’d lined up an interview for her to be head of nursing. As season two ended, Callie intentionally missed the flight Ben had booked and took a cab from the airport to Jim’s house.

[And then . . .]

Judging by the proliferation of backpack, laptop, and sneaker ads on TV, it must be time to head back to school. Since almost as many authors seem to come from the halls of academia as the cubicles of journalism, it makes me wonder why more teachers don’t show up in crime fiction.

After all, the best teachers are about as easy to intimidate as a homicide detective and can spot lies and bad behavior as well as The Mentalist. (Admit it, you know you had that one teacher you swore could read your thoughts.) They usually have a large community network, maybe even a phone tree. At the college level, schedules can be very flexible to allow for fictional snooping, and even those at the primary and secondary level don’t exactly work nine-to-five. (Seven-to-seven, maybe, but this isn’t reality. This is fiction.) They’re encouraged to research and question (as long as they don’t question the principal or dean). Seems to me, teachers are natural-born sleuths.

So, in addition to Janice Hamrick’s Death on Tour (which was excerpted here back in April), featuring a Texas teacher in Egypt, here are a few back-to-school reads, moving from cozy to not-so-cozy.

[Nothing cozy about screaming kids who don’t want vacation to end.]

I like The Glades, but most of the people I talk to around South Florida don’t. They tell me “the main actor’s a goof” or “the FDLE doesn’t really work that way.” Yeah, because burned spies really get away with running around blowing up parts of Miami every week and DNA testing moves as fast as it does on the CSI shows. And let’s not point out the fact that when Miami Vice was on air, Miami Beach was hardly a glamorous place to hang out.

[Take me away...]