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Jade de Jong is the 30-something daughter of a “highly respected police commissioner,” who has returned to her native South Africa after spending a decade away in Britain working bodyguard and surveillance assignments.

In Stolen Lives she’s hired by spoiled and rash Pamela Jordaan, whose husband, Terence, has recently disappeared from their home in Johannesburg’s wealthy Sandton district. Pamela wants to buy De Jong’s protection for herself as well as her daughter, Tamsin, an administrator at one of Terence Jordaan’s chain of strip clubs. “You might have heard of them,” Pamela says to the P.I. “They’re called Heads & Tails. They’re upmarket, totally legitimate and above board. He offers his patrons good, clean fun.” If De Jong suspects that Pamela is overreacting to this situation — that her hubby, so accustomed to dubious activities, could simply have gone off with another woman, maybe one of his own employees — she’s quickly disabused of that notion, when a gun-toting motorcyclist tries to kill them both on a public highway.

The stakes in Stolen Lives escalate quickly. As De Jong struggles to keep Pamela Jordaan from falling apart or falling into worse straits, young Tamsin also vanishes. Questions soon arise about the role Terence Jordaan’s strip clubs might play in the illegal trafficking of women out of South Africa. And in the background of all this, a character of particularly nasty disposition seeks to benefit from the country’s shady trade in counterfeit passports. After torture victims are discovered in her client’s home, it falls to Jade de Jong to sort out whether all of these troubles are part of a threatening message being sent to the Jordaans, or whether there’s something less obvious going on.

Mackenzie’s exploration of life and crime in modern South Africa enriches a propulsive yarn that leaves the reader wanting more. ~ Jeff Pierce

How many mystery novels have you read that take place on Ellesmere Island, Canada’s northernmost neighbor to Greenland and now part of the province of Nunavut? My guess is that White Heat will be your first.

The protagonist here is Edie Kiglatuk, a divorced, half white, half Inuit erstwhile polar bear hunter and reformed alcoholic, who now works as a High Arctic guide and part-time teacher. As this book opens, she’s leading a couple of qalunaat (white men) over the ice to Craig Island, a (fictitious) refuge south of Ellesmere — only to have one of her naïve charges shot fatally, while the other claims not to have witnessed the crime. Edie’s stepson, fellow guide and nurse-in-training Joe Inukpuk, rides to the rescue on his snowmobile, but there’s little he can do to help; shortly after they all return to the hamlet of Autisaq, the gunshot victim dies — the first client Edie has ever lost.

Autisaq’s Council of Elders seeks to hush up this incident. But when disaster strikes again on a subsequent guiding expedition, and Joe Inukpuk barely makes it back to Autisaq with hypothermia and frostbite, Edie determines to figure out what went wrong. She just might succeed, too, provided she can avoid her drinking demons, squelch her disappointment with aspects of Joe’s behavior, and sort out how his apparent slaying links to corrupt Russians, a minor meteorite fragment, a dismembered corpse, avaricious energy companies and a historical expedition in which her most famous ancestor took part.

The opening book in a new series, White Heat provides a captivating portrayal of Inuit culture. Characters sup on sea urchins, sip bladder-busting quantities of hot tea, share the legends of their forefathers, and muse on how their perspectives toward the natural environment diverge from those accepted elsewhere. (“Locals often said the difference between Inuit and southerners was that southerners thought of ice as frozen water, whereas the Inuit knew that water was merely melted ice.”) And they manage to do all of this without interrupting the story’s momentum or urgency. ~ Jeff Pierce

 From the more literary end of the espionage-fiction shelf comes this slow-burning, multilayered yarn about love, loss, betrayal, and life on the French Riviera shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

It’s 1935 and Tom Nash, a British special agent turned successful travel writer, is just commencing the social whirl that for many years has dominated his summers. His vivacious 20-year-old goddaughter, Lucy, has recently arrived at the village of Le Rayol, where she’ll soon join her quarrelsome parents, and other of their privileged (and manifestly eccentric) friends are on their way. Nash looks forward to the distractions these people will bring him, helping him forget—at least for a little while—the pains and horrors of his past.

But then one night, he’s attacked in his own bed by an Italian hit man wielding a chloroform-drenched rag, a pistol, and an equally lethal syringe. Nash manages to get the better of his assailant, then chases him to his death over a precipice and disposes of his body in a nearby bay. Still, this damaged, vulnerable former operative is unnerved by the whole episode. If one person came to do him in, another is likely to follow. Nash needs to know why he’s been targeted, whether it has something to do with one of his previous covert assignments. He also wants to learn how that Italian assassin was so thoroughly acquainted with the layout of his coastal home. Is it because somebody close to Nash was behind this attack? Somebody he trusts? Somebody he loves?

If Tom Nash is to save himself, Lucy, and other people he cherishes, he must fall back on the espionage instincts he thought he’d shed, distrust everybody around him, and relive the memories of a lover executed 16 years before by Russian Bolsheviks.

There’s a studied unhurriedness to Mills’ storytelling that plays well against this novel’s episodes of high drama, and that suggests the influences of Ian Fleming and Joseph Conrad. Readers tired of being dragged bodily through rapid-clip adventures, over one cliffhanger after the next, with only workmanlike prose to lubricate their passage, might find The House of the Hunted a refreshing change. ~ Jeff Pierce

 At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, the elegant passenger liner RMS Titanic—then “the largest moving object on earth”—struck a fast, glancing blow against an iceberg 375 miles off the Newfoundland coast. The ship was only four days into her maiden journey from Southampton, England, to New York City. On board were an extraordinary number of Edwardian-era celebrities from both sides of the Atlantic, plus hundreds of poorer, steerage passengers. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough lifeboats to save everyone, and most of them cast off into the frigid, starry night only partly filled. When the Titanic finally vanished beneath the waves on April 15—only two hours and 40 minutes after the collision—she left two-thirds of her more than 2,200 passengers and crew dead.

The classic non-fiction account of this disaster is Walter Lord’s 1955 A Night to Remember (the basis for a 1958 film of that same name). However, readers looking for an equally dramatic but newer, more personality-rich recap of the vessel’s foundering would do well to pick up a copy of Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage—released just in time for this tragedy’s 100th anniversary.

As its subtitle title suggests, the focus here is on those fortunate folk able to book the most luxurious accommodations for the Titanic’s crossing. Lily May Futrelle, the wife of American mystery writer Jacques Futrelle (who perished in the sinking), described her first-class shipmates as “a rare gathering of beautiful women and splendid men.” Included in their number were real-estate magnate John Jacob Astor IV and his pregnant 18-year-old wife; tennis player and future Olympic gold medalist R. Norris Williams; Denver socialite and women’s rights champion Margaret Brown (immortalized, incorrectly, as “Molly” Brown); Major Archibald Butt, the military aide to U.S. President William Howard Taft; and silent-film actress Dorothy Gibson. (Financier J.P. Morgan had planned to sail on the Titanic as well, but instead stayed behind with his mistress in France.)

Although this work relies often on speculation about the shipboard activities of people who were lost with the Titanic, author Brewster balances that with a splendid employment of first-hand accounts from the survivors—the greatest percentage of whom were cabin-class passengers. He further enlivens his narrative with asides having to do with Edwardian fashion trends, the ship’s rococo accoutrements, and even the 1906 murder of Manhattan architect Stanford White. Brewster’s re-creation of the ship’s last, desperate hours and the rescue of its lifeboat- and boat-scrap-borne survivors is particularly captivating.

All in all, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage is a book to remember. ~ Jeff Pierce

Reading this book, we meander quietly along with a pregnant young wife as she walks through Rome on her way to a concert.  But it is 1943, the woman is German and her husband is fighting in Africa.  The languorous flow of her thoughts – induced by new love and the beauty of the city – is occasionally overtaken by the fears and facts of the war, which she tries to soothe away with her gratitude and faith.  But with our wider awareness of history, the pious village girl’s innocence raises questions:  When does faith become passivity?  When does naiveté become complicity?  This delicate novel beautifully bears the weight, and at the same time shows us how love, beauty and faith can sometimes come together to create a moment’s transcendence. ~Liz Goodwin

Boston lawyer-turned-author Landay’s third standalone novel (after Mission Flats and The Strangler) fairly bolts from the starting blocks with the discovery of a dead teenager, Ben Rifkin, whose knife-punctured body was left in a public park in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburban community that famously identifies itself as “a good place to raise kids.” Originally assigned to prosecute the case is Andy Barber, the well-respected first assistant district attorney for encompassing Middlesex County. However, when Andy’s only son, Jacob—a middle-school classmate of Rifkin’s, who had been a particular target of the deceased’s incessant bullying—becomes a suspect in the murder, the ADA’s politically sensitive boss puts him on paid leave and hands the investigation over instead to a more ruthless colleague, Neal Logiudice.

Acting decisively, though perhaps impetuously, Logiudice shuts down Andy’s initial inquiry into the recent behavior of a pedophile known to have frequented the park where Rifkin perished. He refocuses the DA’s probe exclusively on Jake Barber, whose fellow students have implied openly on Facebook that he’s guilty of the slaying, and who boasted to friends that he owns a “kinda cool” knife.

Andy and his wife, Laurie, have their own doubts about their antisocial, sometimes strange son, but they struggle to keep him out of prison, even disposing of crucial evidence. The case weighs heavily on the Barbers’ marriage, though, especially when it’s revealed that Andy’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all violent men—a fact he had kept from Laurie during their many years together, and something that could conceivably be used against Jake in court, despite doubts about the existence of a “murder gene,” or a tendency toward violence, that runs in families.

Many readers, preferring neatly tied-up plots, will be frustrated by the way Landay drops red herrings and possibly significant clues, but then leaves a surfeit of questions outstanding at the end of this book. However, the raggedness of the story’s final section, especially, is one of its signal strengths, heightening the shocking turn that lurks there. Defending Jacob is a well-constructed emotional roller-coaster ride through one family’s slow destruction. ~ Jeff Pierce

 Jude and Teddy are best friends living in a small Vermont town in the late 1980’s, getting drunk on cheap red wine and sniffing coolant from air conditioners. Jude’s mother Harriet and father Les are aging hippies still immersed in the pot culture of the 60’s, although divorced from each other. Harriet makes glass bongs in her Vermont studio and Les sells the pot he grows indoors in New York City. Eliza, the daughter of Les’ wealthy dancer girlfriend, is on her way to a skiing vacation with friends but stops for a short visit with Jude. On New Year’s Eve 1987 Jude, Teddy and Eliza spend the night together at a party they have crashed.  Their lives are changed irrevocably by the next morning. Teddy is dead from a drug overdose, Eliza is pregnant with Teddy’s child, and Jude is propelled even more deeply into his drug induced haze.

            Despairing at Jude’s downward spiral, Harriet sends him to live in New York with his dad. There Jude looks up Johnny, Teddy’s half brother, who is involved with an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical belligerence of hardcore punk and the righteous intolerance for drugs, meat and sex known as “straight edge”. Jude is drawn to this new life style as a way to hold onto Teddy through a friendship with Johnny. He forms a wary relationship with Eliza as she grapples with the choices she must make due to her unwanted pregnancy.  The three teens, Jude, Johnny and Eliza, form a strong bond as they become caught up in the music scene on the eastern seaboard that embraces the “straight edge” lifestyle. The story moves between Vermont and New York City as each character struggles to come to terms with grief and loss as well as the nature of loyalty and friendship.

            Eleanor Henderson cares about her unpromising cast of characters. She has created an empathic portrait of young people, who if we saw them on the street would be easy to dismiss as punks and losers, but through Henderson’s sympathetic storytelling we care about deeply. Her writing is original and accomplished. This is a great first novel and I eagerly await her next creation.

~Gretchen Echols

“Life is not about what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.”                                ~Chelsea Clinton’s Grandmother

This is not your typical memoir. Actor James Garner—famous for starring in Maverick, The Rockford Files, and myriad films—didn’t pen it all by himself in some Sunset Boulevard garret. Instead, this book is the product of extensive interviewing. Co-author Winokur sat down with Garner twice a week over a period of about 18 months, asked him about the ups and downs of his life, and recorded everything.

As a result, Garner’s voice—wry, witty, warm, and self-deprecating—comes through clearly in these pages. The Garner Files is generally chronological, beginning with the now 83-year-old actor’s difficult childhood in Oklahoma. He was the youngest of three boys, his mother died from a “botched abortion” when Garner was only 4, and his father parceled his sons out to relatives of uneven merits. From there, Garner remembers being “the first Oklahoman drafted for the Korean War.” He remembers the serendipity behind his becoming a Hollywood performer (“The only reason I’m an actor is that a lady pulled out of a parking space in front of a producer’s office”). He remembers meeting and falling in love with his wife-to-be during an Adlai Stevenson for President rally in 1956. He talks here about other film stars he’s admired (especially Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman), his occasional battles to win fair deals from entertainment studios, the health problems he’s endured as a result of on-screen stunts and years of racing cars, his love/hate relationship with golf, the constant pain from arthritis he’s endured since the 1960s, his attendance at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (Garner was seated in the third row at the Lincoln Memorial, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech), and—last but certainly not least—his careful choice of screen roles over the decades (“A reporter asked once if I would ever do a nude scene. I told him I don’t do horror films”).

Garner also admits to being unlike the easygoing, lighthearted, self-confident, and sometimes self-interested characters he’s played on screens large and small. He says he has a bad temper and a tendency toward pessimism, and insists that he’s “really an old curmudgeon.” But then, some of his characters have been that way too, and viewers have delighted in their company all the same. ~ Jeff Pierce

It’s 1966. Kate and her husband are attending an opening of portraits by the renowned photographer Walker Evans. Originally taken on the New York subway using a hidden camera, they are only now on display. While viewing the pictures she recognizes a young man she knew thirty years ago – Tinker Grey. Actually, there are two radically different portraits of Grey. In the first one he is dressed in an impeccable suit; in the second he wears a worn pea jacket and his face is visibly dirty yet there is a satisfied aura about his smile.

Her husband assumes it is the common Depression era story of riches to rags but Katey knows the true nature of Tinker Grey’s story. It is intertwined with her story and that of her roommate Eve. It is a story of “chance encounters which in the moment had seemed so haphazard and effervescent but which with time took on some substance of fate”.

She is taken back to the snowy New Year’s Eve when she first met Tinker. She and Eve are off to their favorite jazz club to see if they can make their combined $3 stretch through a night of martinis or even better, charm someone into buying their drinks for them. Theodore Grey, Tinker to his friends, succumbs to their charms and ends up finding a bottle of champagne as well as buying their favorite gin drinks. They become friends while devising resolutions for each other for the coming year. Before the first week of 1938 is over their lives are changed forever.

One of my particular joys in reading is to learn something new whether literary, or of another time or place. To experience a place I will never get to or a time that one of my relatives might have lived in. Also, I read in order to learn how to live. Granted, now in my 60’s I do have a few ideas on that subject, but I love it when the author through the voice of one character or another articulates something I feel but can’t express well. Or even better, he gives me a clue to understanding a literary classic. For instance this exchange between Katey and one of her new friends about The Cherry Orchard:

-What do you think of the play?       -So far, I like it.       -You don’t find it dated? What with all that fuss over the end of agrarian aristocracy? I should think it very old-fashioned to sympathize with the plight of the Ranevskayas.    -Oh, I think you’re wrong. I think we all have some parcel of the past which is falling into disrepair or being sold off piece by piece. It’s just that for most of us, it isn’t an orchard; it’s the way we’ve thought about something, or someone.

And then three pages later in a telling detail concerning her editor Mason Tate:

Occasionally, he would even pluck a letter from the pile and retreat with it to his office. There, with the door securely closed, in the quiet of the afternoon, he could revisit the faded sentiments of faded friends, undisturbed by all but the occasional thud of an ax in the distance.

I love that. Now I want to read Chekov because I’ve got a clue how this play and others can relate to my life.

Then there is this passage “written” by Katey: “It’s a bit of a cliché to refer to someone as a chameleon: a person who can change his colors from environment to environment. In fact, not one in a million can do that. But there are tens of thousands of butterflies: men and women like Eve with two dramatically different colorings – one which serves to attract and the other which serves to camouflage – and which can be switched at the instant with a flit of the wings.” Another “aha” moment for me when I think that Towles has really nailed the changes in people we know between their public and private selves.

Yes, we all sometimes yearn to end up in exalted circles of society, but this story is deeper than just a modern fairy tale.  There are so many levels on which to enjoy it . Perhaps I shall read it again right away. It is that good.

After concocting a wonderful series of historical crime novels around the covertly ingenious Victorian copper, Sergeant Cribb (Waxwork), British author Lovesey turned his talents to a succession of standalone mysteries, including The False Inspector Dew (a 1982 work inspired by the notorious real-life case of convicted murderer Hawley Crippen) and Keystone (1983), which took place in the rough-and-tumble world of silent-film stuntmen.

It wasn’t until 1991 that the author presented a protagonist to rival Cribb. That year brought the release of The Last Detective, which took place in Bath, a former Roman spa resort west of London. Leading that modern-day story’s cast was Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, a petulant, overweight, middle-aged, and technology averse cop who believes in wearing out shoe leather and wearing down suspects to solve a case, and is contemptuous (to say the least) of the community outreach and management-training techniques that have become such a large part of contemporary policing. From that start, Lovesey has grown a series combining fair-play puzzle themes with eccentric players, situations that demonstrate the clash between Britain’s past and present, and much humor mined from Diamond’s frustration in dealing with subordinates who are less old-fashioned in their ways of crime-solving.

The 11th Diamond outing is Stagestruck. And while it’s not as unpredictable or profusely plotted as the last book, Skeleton Hill (2009), it would be a fine place for somebody unfamiliar with this series to begin reading. The case here centers around Bath’s venerable, 200-year-old Theatre Royal, where aging pop singer Clarion Calhoun is hoping to make a triumphant stage debut. On opening night, however, she suddenly starts clawing at her face and screaming, then collapses. The theater is chary of any resulting scandal, and Calhoun herself refuses interviews. But after it’s discovered that something caustic in her makeup caused Calhoun’s agony, Diamond is sent to determine whether a crime has been committed. Suspicion is quickly cast upon dresser Denise Pearsall, who applied the makeup. And after Pearsall takes a deadly fall backstage, it’s assumed she committed suicide out of guilt. Yet Diamond is far from convinced-and readers should be, too.

Lovesey has shown himself to be a master of mystery-making and misdirection, with the prizes to prove it. Stagestruck earns him more kudos for effectively deploying an ensemble cast, particularly journalist-turned-detective Ingeborg Smith. He’s less successful, though, in developing a subplot here about Diamond’s fear of theaters. Yes, it offers an unusual confrontation with a child molester, but it doesn’t do as much as some previous twists (the death of his supremely tolerant spouse in 2002′s Diamond Dust, for instance) to illuminate new depths in the short-fused detective’s character. ~ Jeff Pierce