Clairvoyants aren't seeing things in new whodunits
One psychic prematurely predicts an acquaintance's death, while another seer apparently failed to see her own murder, in new mystery novels by Andrew M. Greeley and Anne Perry.
Greeley's "Irish Stew!" and Perry's "Southampton Row" are among the latest hardcover mystery and suspense fiction, which also includes works by Robert B. Parker, James Patterson, Rita Mae Brown and Stephen King.
"Irish Stew!" (Forge) continues Greeley's series about Irish-American singer Nuala Anne McGrail and her husband, Dermot. At an international music festival in Milan, Italy, the couple meet Seamus Costelloe, a big-shot Chicago lawyer who — according to Nuala's sixth sense — is doomed. Her attempts to save him lead to a whole new set of problems.
Meanwhile, a psychic's death by strangulation is apparently as much a surprise to her as to anyone, in "Southampton Row" (Ballantine). In the 22nd in Perry's series featuring Victorian London police inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, the victim is found the morning after she had conducted a late-night seance. Complicating matters: One of the seance participants was the wife of a candidate for Parliament whose opponent is Pitt's bitter enemy.
Nathan Smith — middle-aged, millionaire and murdered — is the victim in "Widow's Walk" (Putnam), Parker's 29th book about Boston private eye Spenser. When Smith is found in bed with a bullet hole in his head, suspicion turns to Mary, his young widow. After all, the couple recently was seen fighting at a party, and a witness claims the widow Smith tried to hire him to murder her husband. But it can't be that obvious, can it?
The four members of The Women's Murder Club — a police detective, newspaper reporter, medical examiner and assistant district attorney — appear in their series' second book, "2nd Chance" (Little, Brown). In Patterson's follow-up to last year's "1st to Die," the women put their heads together to investigate a series of murders plaguing San Francisco. The murders seem unrelated until a link emerges: Each victim was the close relative of a city police officer.
Feline sleuth Mrs. Murphy purr-sues a murderer in "Catch as Cat Can" (Bantam), Brown's 10th in the series about Mrs. Murphy and her human, "Harry" Haristeen, postmistress of tiny Crozet, Va. Trouble begins when Harry and Mrs. Murphy find a dead rare woodpecker on their doorstep and the hubcaps are stolen from a friend's car. Cruel pranks, perhaps, but not so what follows — the murder of a junkyard owner.
With "Everything's Eventual" (Scribner), King offers 14 "dark tales," including the title story and "Riding the Bullet," the first paper version of an online story about a hitchhiker whose ride takes him farther than he planned. Other tales include "1408," the first printed version of an audio story about a writer in a ghostly hotel room; and "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe," about a couple whose quarrelsome lunch date turns bloody, with help from the maitre d'.
Other New Mysteries
New England is the crime scene in "The Wicked Flea" (Berkley), Susan Conant's 14th mystery about Massachusetts dog-writer Holly Winter, who tries to sniff out the murderer of a dog owner known for her bizarre behavior; "Murder in the Rough" (St. Martin's) by J.S. Borthwick, in which a Maine golf course yields two corpses; and "The Body in the Bonfire" (Morrow), Katherine Hall Page's 12th book about caterer Faith Fairchild, who tries to find out what's cooking when several crimes are served up at a prestigious Massachusetts prep school.
It's 1941 in "Eureka" (Ballantine), William Diehl's story about a bathtub electrocution that's no accident; and it's 1963 in "Blue Suede Clues" (St. Martin's) by Daniel Klein, in which Elvis — yes, that Elvis — helps look for a Hollywood starlet's killer.
Out West, a Navaho police detective looks into a rash of vandalism and the disappearance of her baby and the baby's father, in "Changing Woman" (Forge) by Aimee and David Thurlo; and a Colorado psychologist examines the brutal murder of his wife's former boss, a district attorney, in "Warning Signs" (Delacorte) by Stephen White.
Welsh village constable Evan Evans is on the case after the director of the recently opened New Age spiritual center vanishes, in "Evans to Betsy" (St. Martin's) by Rhys Bowen.
Two Washington, D.C., private eyes find a link between a suburban teen girl's disappearance and a young boy's murder in "Hell to Pay" (Little, Brown) by George P. Pelecanos.
And a paralyzed investigator scours New York's Chinatown looking for illegal Chinese immigrants who are on a smuggler's hit list in "The Stone Monkey" (Simon & Schuster) by Jeffery Deaver.
