City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate
Riverhead (Penguin), March 2006
ISBN 1-59448-186-5
Trade Paperback

London can be a dangerous place. Just ask Tommy Akhtar, “London’s best [perhaps only] Ugandan-Indian private eye, devoted son [at least most of the time], [and] hard-drinking [which is a remarkable understatement] veteran of the Mujahideen.”

Tommy is a reasonably successful P.I., and he always has plenty of clients.

Kingdom of Lies by Lee Wood
Publisher: St. Martin’s Minotaur.
ISBN: 0-312-34030-3

Sergeant Keen Dunliffe of Leeds is summoned to investigate a mysterious death. A woman has apparently drowned in a pond on the grounds of the estate of George Lascelles, the 7th Earl of Harewood.

Spectres in the Smoke by Tony Broadbent
Publisher: Thomas Dunne / St. Martin’s Minotaur. ISBN: 0-312-29026-8

The scene is London in 1948. People seem to be still waiting for the dust to settle and clear after World War II, and everyone in England is acutely anxious because of political and economic tensions.

DeKok and the Mask of Death by A. C. Baantjer
Translated by H. G. Smittenaar
Speck Press / 1 July 2009 / 978-1-933108-30-8 / Hardcover / $24.00

Here is reason to celebrate: Amsterdam’s “gray sleuth” of the Warmoes Street Station, Inspector DeKok, appears in the twelfth volume in Baantjer acclaimed series to appear in English translation from Speck Press.

DeKok, you ought to first understand, is “from an old and long line of sailors, the first to make his living on shore.” Because of that ancestral heritage, and for other personal reasons, he is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to take a brief leave from his police duties and join the crowds who “are expected to see the sailing ships enter the port” during Operation Sail Amsterdam.

But DeKok’s plans are in jeopardy because a “nice, pretty, athletic” young woman has mysteriously disappeared after having been admitted as a patient in Amsterdam’s Slotervaart Hospital.

FOOLISH UNDERTAKING
MARK DE CASTRIQUE
Poisoned Pen Press HC 02/06

In Gainesboro, a small mountain community in North Carolina, Barry Clayton had to give up a promising career elsewhere when he was needed instead at the family business, Clayton and Clayton Funeral Directors.