Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Elanor Dymott is a debut novel that reminds us that even the people we think we know best can hide dark secrets (available May 6, 2013).

Alex is in his thirties, a solitary man who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful and vivacious wife, Rachel.

After Rachel is brutally murdered one Midsummer Night on the grounds of their alma mater in Oxford, Alex returns to the college that winter, and through the shroud of his shock and grief, begins to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. In his exploration of Rachel’s history, Alex encounters her former tutor and trusted mentor, whose influence over Rachel’s life was more significant Alex might have expected; Rachel’s self-centered and difficult godmother, whose jealousy has waxed and waned over the years; and her university friends, who shared Rachel’s love of Browning and taste for the illicit.

Every Contact Leaves A Trace is Elanor Dymott’s debut novel. As much as it’s a mystery, it’s a character study of both the narrator, Alex, and of his murdered wife, Rachel.

[How well do we ever know anyone?]

Dark Tide by Elizabeth Haynes is a suspenseful traditional mystery set in England (available March 12, 2013).

Genevieve has finally escaped the stressful demands of her job and achieved her dream: to leave London behind and start a new life aboard a houseboat in Kent. But on the night of her boat-warming party the dream is shattered when a body washes up beside the boat, and Genevieve recognizes the victim.

As the sanctuary of the boatyard is threatened, and Genevieve’s life seems increasingly at risk, she learns the real cost of mixing business with pleasure.

Elizabeth Haynes’s Dark Tide is set in contemporary England, mostly at a marina full of houseboats, with flashbacks to the heroine Genevieve’s previous life in London. Having burned out on her high-powered sales job, she turns to pole dancing to make a lot of money quickly, while doing her best to ignore the more unsavory (and possibly illegal) aspects of the club where she works. She saves all her money so she can pursue a dream:  buy a boat, fix it up so she can live there, and take time off from working. When the book opens, she’s in mid-renovation and preparing to host a boat-warming party that will mix her new friends from the marina and her old friends from London…and then, an old friend is murdered.

[But when murder is about, it’s hard to judge friend from foe...]

What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris is Book 8 in the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series set in Regency England (available March 5, 2013).

The death of a notorious London diamond merchant draws aristocratic investigator Sebastian St. Cyr and his new wife Hero into a sordid world of greed, desperation, and the occult, when the husband of Sebastian’s former lover Kat Boleyn is accused of the murder.

For the sake of Kat, the woman he once loved and lost, Sebastian plunges into a treacherous circle of intrigue, but he finds his new marriage to Hero tested by the shadows of his first love, especially when he begins to suspect that Kat is keeping secrets of her own. And as matters rise to a crisis, Sebastian must face a bitter truth—that he has been less than open with the fearless woman who is now his wife.

C.S. Harris skillfully carries several secondary plotlines throughout her Regency-set mysteries featuring Sebastian St. Cyr; What Darkness Brings is the eighth entry in the series. 

Harris’s detective hero is the son of an aristocrat, but the reader and Sebastian have gradually learned that his origins are not clear-cut. The mystery of his origins; the mystery of what really happened to his mother; and a few side issues related to his father have run throughout the series, sometimes resulting in cliffhanger endings even after the central mystery of a novel has been solved. The mysteries of the main plotlines fall within an overarching, greater mystery: who is Sebastian? And once he knows who he is, what will he do with that knowledge?

[A mystery within a mystery...]

A Cold and Lonely Place by Sara J. Henry is the second traditional mystery following journalist Troy Chance (available February 5, 2013).

Freelance writer Troy Chance is snapping photos of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival ice palace when the ice-cutting machine falls silent. Encased in the ice is the shadowy outline of a body—a man she knows. One of her roommates falls under suspicion, and the media descends. Troy’s assigned to write an in-depth feature on the dead man, who, it turns out, was the privileged son of a wealthy Connecticut family who had been playing at a blue collar life in this Adirondack village. And the deeper Troy digs into his life and mysterious death, the murkier things become. After the victim’s sister comes to town and a string of disturbing incidents unfold, it’s clear someone doesn’t want the investigation to continue. Troy doesn’t know who to trust, and what she ultimately finds out threatens to shatter the serenity of these mountain towns. She must decide which family secrets should be exposed, what truths should remain hidden, and how far her own loyalty can reach.

A Cold and Lonely Place follows Learning to Swim, for which Sara J. Henry won several awards, including an Agatha and an Anthony. You don’t need to have read Learning to Swim to understand its sequel; there are enough references to previous events that it was easy to follow.

[She dropped some clues for us to follow!]

Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley is the fifth book in the historical mystery series featuring preteen protagonist Flavia de Luce (available January 29, 2013).

When the tomb of St. Tancred is opened at a village church in Bishop’s Lacey, its shocking contents lead to another case for Flavia de Luce. Greed, pride, and murder result in old secrets coming to light—along with a forgotten flower that hasn’t been seen for half a thousand years.

With Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley, I took my first look at the Flavia de Luce series. Set in 1950s England, these historical cozies feature an unusual detective: Flavia is only eleven years old, or possibly twelve, and she has a deep and passionate love of poisons. That seems to go along with her general love of the macabre and of experimenting in her dead uncle’s chemistry lab. Speaking from Among the Bones is fifth in the series; if you’re a fan already, you should know that some new information about Flavia’s mother is related in this installment.

[And if you’re not a fan yet, you soon will be...]

Proof of Guilt by the writing team Charles Todd is the 15th book in the Ian Rutledge series, set in England after the First World War (available January 29, 2013).

An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While signs point to murder, vital questions remain. Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed?

One small clue leads the Inspector to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world’s best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise is missing. But is he the dead man? And do either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance—or possible death? What about his sister? Or the London office clerk? Is Matthew Traynor, French’s cousin and partner who heads the Madeira office, somehow involved?

Ian Rutledge, a former officer in the British army, has an unusual case of shell shock, now named PTSD, in which he sometimes hears the voice of a dead soldier inside his head, making sarcastic commentary on the proceedings. (This has become less significant as the series progresses.) Rutledge returns to working as a police detective to ward off his inner demons and makes his job the center of his life. The series also explores how Rutledge has to maneuver the politics of the police department and his various colleagues.

[He hears dead people?]

Parlor Games by Maryka Biaggio is a historical novel based on the real-life exploits of turn-of-the-century con artist May Dugas (available January 15, 2013).

In 1887, at the tender age of eighteen, May ventures to Chicago in hopes of earning enough money to support her family. Circumstances force her to take up residence at the city’s most infamous bordello, but May soon learns to employ her considerable feminine wiles to extract not only sidelong looks but also large sums of money from the men she encounters.  Insinuating herself into Chicago’s high society, May lands a well-to-do fiancé—until, that is, a Pinkerton Agency detective named Reed Doherty intervenes and summarily foils the engagement.

Unflappable May quickly rebounds, elevating seduction and social climbing to an art form as she travels the world, eventually marrying a wealthy Dutch Baron. Unfortunately, Reed Doherty is never far behind and continues to track May in a delicious cat-and-mouse game as the newly minted Baroness’s misadventures take her from San Francisco to Shanghai to London and points in between.

[Nice work if you can get it...]

Watching the Dark is the 20th novel in the DCI Alan Banks series by Peter Robinson (available January 8, 2013).

When Detective Inspector Bill Quinn is found murdered in the tranquil grounds of the St. Peter’s Police Treatment Centre, and compromising photographs are discovered in his room, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is well aware that he must handle the highly sensitive—and dangerously explosive—investigation with the utmost discretion. Because the case may involve police corruption, an officer from Professional Standards, Inspector Joanna Passero, is assigned to work with Banks. But the relationship is far from smooth, and Banks soon finds himself and his methods under uncomfortable scrutiny.

Banks discovers that Quinn’s murder may be linked to a cold case involving a young English girl named Rachel Hewitt who disappeared in Tallinn, Estonia, six years earlier. A seasoned detective who follows the evidence and his own instincts, Banks is sure that finding the truth about Rachel will lead to Quinn’s killer. Following elusive leads in the dark, cobbled alleys of Tallinn’s Old Town, it soon becomes clear that someone doesn’t want the past stirred up.

Back in Eastvale, DI Annie Cabbot, follows clues that lead her into the heart of a migrant labor scam involving corrupt bureaucrats and a loan shark who feeds on the poor. As the evidence beings to mount in both Tallinn and Eastvale, it soon becomes clear that the crimes are linked in more ways than Banks imagined, and that solving them may put even more lives in jeopardy, including his own.

[You never know where the clues will lead...]

Merciless by Lori Armstrong is the latest in the series featuring former Army sniper turned FBI agent Mercy Gunderson (available January 8, 2013)

Mercy Gunderson is thrown into her first FBI murder case, working with the tribal police on the Eagle River Reservation, where the victim is the teenaged niece of the recently elected tribal president. When another gruesome killing occurs during the early stages of the investigation, Mercy and fellow FBI agent Shay Turnbull are at odds about whether the crimes are connected.

Mercy can’t discuss her concerns about the baffling cases with her live-in boyfriend, Eagle River County Sheriff Mason Dawson, due to job confidentiality, and the couple’s home on the ranch descends into chaos when Dawson’s eleven-year-old-son Lex is sent to live with them. While hidden political agendas and old family vendettas turn ugly, masking motives and causing a rift among the tribal police, the tribal council, and the FBI, Mercy realizes that the deranged killer is still at large—and is playing a dangerous game with his sights set on Mercy as his next victim.

Merciless is the third book in Lori Armstrong’s Mercy Gunderson series about a former Army sniper who’s become an FBI agent. Mercy is one-quarter Minneconjou Sioux, which both gives her an edge and hinders her when a bizarre murder case on a nearby reservation is assigned to her and her partner. There’s ample conflict between Mercy and the other FBI agent with whom she working, between Mercy and the people surrounding the victim, and between the different law enforcement agencies supposedly collaborating to solve the case. The case, of course, ends up being more multifaceted than it originally appears.

[Hard as a diamond, tough as nails...]

A Study in Revenge by Kieran Shields is the second in the historical mystery series set in 19th century New England and featuring police detective Archie Lean and his partner Perceval Grey (available January 8, 2013).

In the summer of 1893, a thief named Cosgrove is shot while delivering a stolen artifact in Portland, Maine. Days after the thief’s burial, police detective Archie Lean investigates when the man’s body turns up again, badly scorched, in an abandoned house. The scene has been staged to give the appearance that Cosgrove somehow rose from the dead, entered the house on his own, all while on fire. Occult symbols and messages appear near the crime.

Perplexed as to why anyone would stage such an elaborate hoax, Lean summons his erstwhile partner, Perceval Grey, a brilliant former Pinkerton detective who happens to be half Native American. What comes next is a breathless chase, from the dark streets of Portland to the provincial drawing rooms of Boston, for the thunderstone, a mysterious, centuries-old relic that wields cryptic yet potentially incredible power. 

A Study in Revenge is the first novel I’ve read by Kieran Shields; it’s the second in a series set in 1890s Portland, Maine, and featuring straightforward Deputy Marshal Archie Lean and brilliant, eccentric private detective Perceval Grey. Shields thoughtfully provides backstory for the first book in the series early on, so you won’t miss anything by starting with this one.

I love mysteries with historical settings, and this one does a great job of establishing how it might feel to live in New England and watch the 20th century rapidly approaching.

[We’re on board for this...]

Fox Tracks by Rita Mae Brown is the eighth book in the Sister Jane foxhunting cozy mystery series (available November 20, 2012).

Fox Tracks is Rita Mae Brown’s eighth “Sister” Jane Arnold mystery, but the first I have read. I picked this one up because the mysteries relate to modern foxhunting, something about which I knew very little other than that it is legal in the United States, but the focus is on chasing the foxes rather than killing them. My limited information seemed to be borne out by the story, plus I learned quite a bit more about the whole process, in quite a bit of detail.

What I especially liked about the foxhunting aspect of the story was how what seems like a simple enough thing—getting on a horse and chasing a wild animal—turns out to have all sorts of organizational, economic, social, and political aspects.

[Imagine how complicated it is for the fox...]

Killer Librarian by Mary Lou Kirwin is the first book in a new cozy mystery series (available November 27, 2012).

Minnesota librarian Karen Nash decides to go on her London vacation after her boyfriend jilts her the day they were set to leave. Then she sees him at the airport boarding the same plane as she, only with another woman. Karen’s thoughts turn murderous and later spill over in what she assumes is an idle pub conversation with a sympathetic stranger. Only later does she realize this man might have taken her at her word when she angrily said she wanted her ex dead. Meanwhile as Karen gets better acquainted with Caldwell Perkins, the owner of the charming B&B where she is staying, she discovers they have a lot in common—he might well love books as much as she does.

Things are starting to look up when all of a sudden a dead body turns up in Caldwell’s B&B sitting room—and several of the guests seem to be suspicious. Karen can’t help but play detective, and clues begin to fall into place as she visits museums, used bookstores, and the Chelsea garden show. With that mystery solved, Karen realizes it’s time to put her hurt and anger behind her. But is it too late?

I’m not the biggest fan of cozies, but how could I turn away from one titled Killer Librarian? It’s the first in a new series of cozy mysteries by Mary Lou Kirwin, featuring smalltown librarian Karen Nash on her first trip to England, the home of so many of her favorite authors and the setting of many of her favorite books. The way she talks about her reading will be familiar to anyone who loves books. Naturally, Karen encounters a mysterious death while there, which she investigates; this is a mystery, after all.

[We would expect nothing less...]

Beneath the Abbey Wall by A.D. Scott is the third historical Scottish mystery in the Highland Gazette series (available November 6, 2012.)

On a dark, damp Sunday evening, a man taking a shortcut home sees a hand reaching out in supplication from a bundle of sacks. In an instant he knows something terrifying has happened.

In the Highlands in the late 1950s, much of the local newspaper’s success was due to Mrs. Smart, the no-nonsense office manager who kept everything and everyone in line. Her murder leaves her colleagues in shock and the Highland Gazette office in chaos. Joanne Ross, a budding reporter and shamefully separated mother, assumes Mrs. Smart’s duties, but an intriguing stranger provides a distraction not only from the job and the investigation but from everything Joanne believes in.

Beneath the Abbey Wall by A.D. Scott is the third book in a series featuring the staff of the Highland Gazette, a fictional newspaper in 1950s Scotland. Scott uses an omniscient eye to give a rounded view of the crime from a wide range of local characters, among them the newspaper’s expatriate Glaswegian editor, McAllister; the matriarch of a Traveler family, Jenny McPhee; and female reporter Joanne Ross. The variety of voices has the happy result of making it easy to pick up a lot about the different characters if, like me, you’re new to the series.

[There’s nothing objective about this newspaper...]

Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal is the second book in a traditional historical mystery series (available October 16, 2012).

England, 1940. As the Battle of Britain rages in the skies, Maggie Hope trains to become an MI-5 agent. She’s come a long way from being Winston Churchill’s secretary, but is disappointed to find her first mission is in neither France nor Germany, but at Windsor Castle, where she is to tutor the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. But thrown into the upstairs-downstairs world of royals and servants, Maggie gets more than she bargained for. A possible suicide enmeshes her in an investigation and uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from the castle to Bletchley Park. The code-breaking machine known as Enigma, England’s top weapon against Germany, is in peril, and even at Windsor Castle, Maggie Hope may be behind enemy lines.

I missed the first novel in this new historical mystery series by Susan Elia MacNeal, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, but am very pleased I found Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, which is set in England during World War II. Teen readers as well as adults might enjoy this novel because of the younger protagonists; even if readers don’t have a strong background in the history of the Second World War, the relevant facts are provided within the story.

[Just the way I like my facts . . .]

The Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon is a stand-alone traditional mystery (available October 2, 2012).

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity.

The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered. Deeply connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina’s job is to examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks might hold.
 

I was familiar with the work of author Donna Leon through her twenty-one volume Commissario Guido Brunetti series, which I first discovered a couple of decades ago in my local library. (A twenty-second volume is due out in 2013.) However, The Jewels of Paradise, though set in Italy like the Brunetti books, is a stand-alone, or perhaps the first in a new series. What the new book shares with Leon’s previous work is strong scene-painting and the author’s scholarly knowledge of musical history, this time emerging through her protagonist.

[Bring on the scholars!]

The Cutting Season is a  traditional mystery with hints of the gothic by Attica Locke (available September 18, 2012).

Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation where the past and the present coexist uneasily. The estate’s owners have turned the place into an eerie tourist attraction complete with full-dress reenactments and carefully restored slave quarters. Outside the gates, an ambitious corporation has been busy snapping up land from struggling families who have grown sugar cane for generations, replacing local employees with illegal laborers.

Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean. The list of suspects is long, but when the cops zero in on a person of interest, Caren has a feeling they’re chasing the wrong leads. Putting herself at risk, she unearths startling new facts about an old mystery—the long-ago disappearance of a former slave—that has unsettling ties to the modern-day crime. In pursuit of the truth about Belle Vie’s history—and her own—Caren discovers secrets about both cases that an increasingly desperate killer will do anything to keep hidden.

I really, really enjoyed The Cutting Season by Attica Locke as a mystery.  Even more, I enjoyed it as a novel about the social and economic tensions of contemporary southern Louisiana, arising from almost two centuries of trying to recover from what was once a slave economy, the cultivation of sugar cane.  Sugar cane is still a very labor-intensive crop, so the story was complicated by the presence of corporations hiring illegal immigrants as workers and then treating them badly, which of course resonated strongly with the slavery-era past.

[It was supposed to be the season of growth, not death . . .]

Hanging by a Thread by Sophie Littlefield is a stand-alone young adult paranormal mystery novel (available September 11, 2012).

The quaint little beach town of Winston, California, may be full of wholesome townsfolk, picturesque beaches, and laid back charm, but Clare Knight is about to uncover something underneath its thriving demeanor. Someone is hiding something, and it’s as gruesome as the townsfolk, and their stately homes, are stunning. Amanda Stavros, fellow classmate and resident of Winston, is gone and there’s no sign of her ever coming back. Everyone says she was taken and murdered, but where’s the evidence? Why isn’t there a single ounce of proof? And why is everyone okay with this, except for Clare?

Luckily—or as it’s been turning out, unluckily—Clare possesses a gift, an ability to see visions from the clothes she works with. And since her clothes come solely from the townsfolk, Clare has become privy to some startling and disturbing memories of these townspeople. Will she uncover who killed Amanda Stavros? Or is she just moving herself up in line to be the next victim of Winston?

Sophie Littlefield’s young adult mystery novel Hanging By A Thread deeply entwines the heroine Clare’s psychic talent, clothing-related clairvoyance, into the story. Clare’s connection to clothing appears before we the readers even know she has a psychic gift. Clothing itself is an integral part of a mystery from the past, that gave rise to her talent, and foreshadows the later murder plot.

[Stitching together the clues . . .]

Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross is the first in a series of mysteries based on the British television series (available September 4, 2012).

Meet Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. He’s a murder detective with an extraordinary case clearance rate. He’s obsessive, instinctive, and intense. Nobody who ever stood at his side has a bad word to say about him. And yet there are rumors that Luther is bad—not corrupt, not on the take, but tormented. He seethes with a hidden fury that at times he can barely control. Sometimes it sends him to the brink of madness, making him do things he shouldn’t—things well beyond the limits of the law.

I tried something new with Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross. Rather than reading a crime novel that was later made into a movie or television series, I read a novel that grew out of a television series.

[The book is always better . . . or is it?]

Bleeding Through by Sandra Parshall is the fifth book in the Rachel Goddard traditional mystery series (available September 4, 2012).

When veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger take teenagers on an outing to clean up roadside trash in rural Mason County, Virginia, they make a grisly discovery: the plastic-wrapped body of a young woman—the sister of one of the teens.

During Tom’s investigation, questions arise. Was it random, or was she killed because she was working to prove that a Mason County man was wrongly convicted of murder? If an innocent man was convicted, then the real murderer must be free—and ready to kill to stay that way.

Rachel is coping with a visit from her own sister, Michelle, who is terrified that a man is stalking her.  Is the mysterious stalker real and dangerous? Will he turn his attention to Rachel too?

Though Bleeding Through by Sandra Parshall is the fifth book in the Rachel Goddard series, I didn’t have any trouble getting into the story, even when events of the previous mysteries in the series surfaced. Parshall did a great job of making the past events not only interesting but relevant to the current story.

The novel opens with an emotionally gripping scene that reminded me, just a little, of the opening of the television series Twin Peaks: a group of high school students are out picking up litter when they discover the plastic-wrapped body of a young woman—unfortunately, it turns out that she’s the sister of one of the students in the group.

[Ouch, bad timing!]