Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, re­luc­tant­ly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he's recruited by British In­tel­li­gence.

Rudi ends up keeping four in­tel­li­gence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, im­plau­si­ble. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as …continue.

The Rev. Merrily Watkins is the "de­liv­er­ance consultant" -- a euphemism for exorcist -- for a diocese on the Welsh border. A Wiccan couple move into a long-de­con­se­crat­ed church in a remote village, and the local fun­da­men­tal­ist-style Anglican priest leads a witchhunt.

The viewpoint characters are all en­ter­tain­ing: level-headed Merrily; her smart-alec teenager, Jane; their old codger neighbor, Gomer; and the two Wiccans, Betty and Robin. The plot is both page-turning and un­hur­ried­ly developed: the first body takes 250 pages to appear. We learn something about con­tem­po­rary village life, Wales, An­gli­can­ism, Wicca, …continue.

DI John Rebus is struggling with an incipient gang war in Edinburgh. He's in­ves­ti­gat­ing an elderly academic who might be a Nazi war criminal. A Bosnian prostitute has brought out the white knight in him. His personal life is a mess: He's off the booze, but work is the only thing keeping him going. And his daughter has been run down in the street, perhaps as a warning to him.

Rebus somehow struggles with all of this, coming out more or less victorious, but at a cost to …continue.

Suzanne Milner is a graduate student re­search­ing young offenders in Sheffield. She finds the body of a young woman. Soon another young woman's body is found. There seems to be an un­ex­plained connection between several young people.

Listen to the Shadows works fairly well as a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller: there are enough twists and mis­di­rec­tion to keep us off-balance and guessing until the end. The pro­tag­o­nist, though, is an ex­as­per­at­ing mess. Beset by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and festered guilt, she spends most of the book being buffeted by events, reacting helplessly, …continue.

As Dr. Watson famously said of Irene Adler, "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." Carole Nelson Douglas has parlayed Irene Adler into a series of books.

In Spider Dance, Irene and her friend, Nell Huxleigh, are in New York City, trying to find out who Irene's long-lost mother was. The infamous Lola Montez is the most likely contender. Holmes is also in town, in­ves­ti­gat­ing a grotesque murder at the Vanderbilt mansion. Inevitably, the two cases become tangled up.

Even by the standards of Sher­lock­iana, the plot is improbable: rogue Ul­tra­mon­tanes, lost …continue.

The Old Races—­gar­goyles, dragons, vampires, and more—are still around, though few ordinary humans are aware of them, since they can all assume human form.

Margrit Knight, a feisty Legal Aid lawyer in New York City, defends Alban, a gargoyle falsely accused of murdering women in Central Park. She finds herself drawn into murky struggles between different factions and she becomes in­creas­ing­ly attracted to the statuesque Alban, who has long been in self-imposed exile.

Gargoyles are a novel twist in the in­creas­ing­ly popular urban fantasy genre. En­ter­tain­ing and fast-paced.

Three very different young men graduate from the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1960. Wambaugh's classic first novel follows them for five years until they meet again under fire in the Watts Riots.

In a series of vignettes, Wambaugh shows how they become hardened and cynical on the streets. Some will absorb the racist attitudes of their fellow officers. All will see horrifying things as they serve as patrol officers, vice cops, or juvenile officers.

Grim but en­thralling.

Timothy Cranmer is a former spy handler, put out to pasture at the end of the Cold War. Larry Pettifer, left-wing academic and Byronic espouser of lost causes, was not only Cranmer's best double agent but a friend and rival since childhood.

Now Larry has gone missing, as has 37 million pounds and Cranmer's young mistress, Emma. Cranmer is thought to be an accomplice. Cranmer must find Larry. The trail will take him deep in the Caucasus.

The book moves slowly through the first half, until Cranmer finally decides to take action and …continue.

Molly Murphy, an early twentieth-century private detective, returns from New York to her native Ireland, in order to track down her client's long-lost sister. Along the way, she encounters a dead body in her cabin, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in Dublin, and (briefly) James Joyce.

Molly is engaging and quick-witted, with a contrarian streak that gets her into trouble. Bowen evokes the early 20th century from bustling New York to the social strat­i­fi­ca­tions of a liner, to British-occupied Dublin.

The book is marred by some elementary ge­o­graph­i­cal errors: the River Liffey, not …continue.

Judge is the sixth and final book in the Wess'har Series, and the sequel to Ally.

For the first time, focus shifts to 25th-century Earth, as the eco­log­i­cal­ly radical Eqbas arrive to clean up the mess. Once again, the central themes are ethics and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism, and the moral quandaries posed by the existence of c'naatat, a parasite that confers im­mor­tal­i­ty upon its host. The series draws to a close, resolving the fates of the central characters: the ruthlessly principled former cop, Shan Frankland; her two husbands, the gentle marine, Ade Bennett, and the alien war …continue.