Rumpole of the Bailey is familiar to us from his later years as an old warhorse, a Fal­staffi­an character living a life of crime (defending criminals), drinking Chateau Thames Embankment at Pommeroy's wine bar, and sparring with re­cal­ci­trant judges, fellow members of his Chambers, and She Who Must Be Obeyed: his long-suffering wife, Hilda. He has often alluded to his first great case, the Penge Bungalow Murders, when alone and without a leader, he suc­cess­ful­ly saved a young man from hanging for a double murder.

At last, Rumpole …continue.

The Accusers is one of the more recent titles in Lindsey Davis's long-running series about Marcus Didius Falco, an informer (private detective) in ancient Rome. Davis's prose is slyly witty with an occasional leavening of snark.

Falco and Associates look into the death of a senator who committed suicide after being convicted of corruption. Was it really suicide? A com­pli­cat­ed courtroom drama ensues.

On a par with other books in the series. En­ter­tain­ing, amusing, and plenty of plot twists.

Hitchcock Sewell is an undertaker who finds the murdered body of a waitress on the front door of his funeral parlor, one winter's evening during a wake. Hitch and his weath­er­woman girlfriend, Bonnie, become obsessed with finding out who killed the waitress.

This is a fairly amusing comic mystery, with a semi-plausible but twisted plot. Hitch is a sym­pa­thet­ic character, albeit one who drinks too much and whose eye wanders.

Sequel to The Wrong Kind of Blood, in which private eye Ed Loy returned to his native Dublin after 20 years in Los Angeles.

Loy is asked to find Emily, a teenager from the pres­ti­gious Howard family, after porno­graph­ic photos of her are sent to her father. He locates her easily, but not before he finds a body, the first of several murders that will rip the Howards apart, unearthing long-buried secrets.

Loy is a hard-boiled private eye, somewhat in the Marlowe vein: "a man of honor, by instinct, …continue.

This is the latest in Tony Hillerman's long-running series of police pro­ce­du­rals featuring Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo tribal police.

Leaphorn has retired recently and misses the job. An old, old case of his comes to life when he is shown a recent picture of a priceless Navajo rug long thought to be destroyed in a fire that killed a man on the FBI's most-wanted list. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion leads him into finding what really happened to the rug and the long-dead killer.

Hillerman, as ever, …continue.

A gritty noir set in the western Irish city of Galway. Jack Taylor used to be in the guards (police) as a young man, but nowadays he's usually found at the bottom of a bottle. He makes a little money by finding things. One day, a distraught mother asks him to prove that her teenaged daughter did not commit suicide. He is reluctant to take the case, fearing (rightly) that it will require too much of him. Jack struggles mightily with his alcoholism, and both the case and his drinking …continue.

The second of Charlaine Harris's Dead series about Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in small-town Louisiana. A telepathic waitress. With a vampire boyfriend.

Vampires were legalized two years ago and now live openly. Sookie is asked by the local vampire cabal to visit their coun­ter­parts in Dallas and use her talents to find a missing vampire. She finds that he is being held by the Fellowship of the Sun, a fun­da­men­tal­ist church that wants to take the un out of undead.

Harris portrays life in small Southern towns …continue.

Baltimore: home to Edgar Alan Poe, the Orioles, and P.I. Tess Monaghan, the subject of most of Laura Lippman's books.

Tess's live-in boyfriend Crow is a trusting soul, which both endears him to her and ex­as­per­ates her. One cold night, he brings home a homeless teenager, Lloyd Jupiter. At first, she is annoyed. Then she realizes that Lloyd is un­wit­ting­ly connected to the recent murder of a federal prosecutor.

As events develop, Crow and Lloyd go on the run, while Tess stonewalls against the feds, reluctant to betray Crow's trust.

Tess, like so …continue.

A certain subgenre has grown up over the last few years. Call it "vampire mystery" or urban fantasy or "horror fiction" or "paranormal romance". Stories set in a world that looks a lot like ours, but witches, vampires, werewolves, and other creatures exist among us, sometimes openly, sometimes not. The creatures have complex personal lives, generally sticking together with their own kind and treating gingerly with the other para­nor­mals. The hero (often, heroine) is not nec­es­sar­i­ly human and has close friends, lovers, and enemies who are vampires or werewolves or witches. In the best …continue.

A small troupe of traveling players spend a few days in the Oxford of 1434 and are nearly framed for a murder.

Frazer evokes the sights and sounds of medieval Oxford during the Corpus Christi holiday, the hard life of traveling players, and the goings-on of a rich merchant's household. Amazingly enough, she almost completely avoids the colleges of Oxford. The mystery itself is thin and occupies little of the book, as the author prefers to con­cen­trate on the other aspects of her tale.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing.