When a high-end BMW is blown up in a rural Arizona school parking lot, the preliminary investigation suggests eco-terrorism, since the car owner is a well-known mediator in matters concerning a controversial multimillion-dollar resort planned on Navajo lands in the Grand Canyon. Navajo tribal cop Bernadette Manuelito is at the scene moments after the explosion, quickly stepping in to secure the area and prevent further carnage, unaware that it will plunge her into one of the most intriguing and potentially deadly mysteries ever to come her way. Song of the Lion is the latest in Anne Hillerman's series featuring characters created by her late father, the legendary Tony Hillerman. Although she echoes her father's voice perfectly, Hillerman brings a totally new sensibility to the series, elevating the female contingent without neglecting the contributions of series stalwarts Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. There is no shortage of Navajo culture and mythology woven into the narrative, as well as a very modern Old West tale of jealousy, envy and revenge.

SWAN SONG
They call him "The Composer." It seems an innocuous enough moniker, until you learn that the nickname is derived from the rolling credits at the end of homemade videos of slow murder. He abducts people, seemingly at random, leaving only a calling card as a clue: a small hangman's noose at the scene of the abduction. The Burial Hour, the 13th in Jeffery Deaver's series featuring wheelchair-bound investigator Lincoln Rhyme and his able-bodied compatriot/lover Amelia Sachs, begins with the pair racing against time to save the Composer's current video victim, a businessman with a noose around his neck, balanced none-too-steadily atop a precariously placed box. One wrong move, and the rope will snap the victim's neck like a saltine cracker. With Rhyme and Sachs hot on the Composer's trail, the arch-criminal makes good his escape, but soon his macabre handiwork turns up on a dusty back road in southern Italy. And Rhyme, who can be coaxed out of his apartment even less often than porcine detective Nero Wolfe, will at last leave not only his apartment but even the continent to bring his latest nemesis to justice.

OLD ENEMIES
I started reading C.J. Box with his first novel, Open Season, in the summer of 2001. Now, 16 years and 16 Joe Pickett novels later, I am still reading, watching Pickett's career as a game warden in Wyoming triumph and suffer. Box's latest, the aptly titled Vicious Circle, finds Pickett once again up against disgraced rodeo star Dallas Cates, with whom Pickett has some unpleasant personal history (his daughter ran off for a time with Cates, learning the hard way what a callous individual he is). This time, there is ample evidence that Cates was complicit in the killing of a ne'er-do-well character who haunted the periphery of Pickett's life: Dave Farkus. Moreover, Pickett is pretty sure he witnessed the murder, albeit via heat-sensing night scope. But as strong as the evidence may be, Cates has a trick or two up his sleeve, including a canny defense lawyer who leaves Cates free to continue his seeming life's work of bedeviling clan Pickett. Vicious Circle is perhaps the most intricately plotted installment in the series since its inception; Box never falls into the series trap of caricaturing his protagonist or making him seem larger than life. Pickett remains a good guy fighting the good fight, quietly and for all the right reasons.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY
Let me go on record as saying that this is one of the most difficult reviews I have ever had to write, for a myriad of reasons. First off, Greg Iles' latest novel, Mississippi Blood, is roughly twice the length of your average mystery novel. And it's the third book of a trilogy, which adds another 1,600-plus pages. I can give you but a brief synopsis, something along the lines of the three blind men touching an elephant and each thinking the animal looks completely different. And so it is with Mississippi Blood. Detective novel? Yep. Police procedural? Yep, that, too. Courtroom drama? Affirmative, Your Honor. Romantic interest, post-Jim Crow racism (The Double Eagles, a fictional KKK splinter group, are particularly chilling), Southern culture clash, decades-old secrets enshrouded in Spanish moss? Oh, yeah, all of that and more. There are overtones of Mockingbird-era Harper Lee in here, and storytelling skills that rival those of the late, great John D. MacDonald. As all books do, Mississippi Blood draws to a conclusion, and therein lies the hardest part of this review: Because as long as this book is, and as long as the entire trilogy is, I simply didn't want it to end. I found myself oddly wanting to move to Natchez, Mississippi, and see how the rest of these people's lives played out.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the 17th installment of the "Joe Pickett" series (after Off the Grid), the Wyoming game warden faces familiar adversaries including the Cates family and his mother-in-law, Missy. In a previous antagonistic encounter with the Cates family (in Endangered), Joe had managed to survive but he isn't sure what will happen now that Dallas Cates has been released from prison, but surely it will be revenge. A twisted, interlocked series of events that includes the murder of a hunting guide, a kidnapping, a hefty insurance policy, the stalking of Joe's family and Missy's new husband, lead Joe to face off against Dallas and his quadriplegic mother, Brenda, who is incarcerated in the Wyoming state prison for women. The outcome is explosive with a sustained impact on the Pickett family. VERDICT The unexpected, suspenseful turns will keep readers enthralled. Another winner for Box. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16.]—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Colls., Mt. Carmel

At the start of Edgar-winner Box's crackling 17th Joe Pickett novel (after 2016's Off the Grid), the Wyoming game warden is aboard a small plane in search of hunter Dave Farkus, "currently an unemployed layabout collecting dubious disability checks," who has gone on the run in the frozen high country. With the aid of an infrared spotting device, Joe locates Dave—right before the fugitive is fatally shot. Joe quickly settles on a suspect: erstwhile rodeo star Dallas Cates, just released from the prison where Joe helped send him 18 months earlier. Dallas's motive? Scorched-earth revenge on Joe. To that end, the diabolically clever Dallas has recruited a gang of psychopathic miscreants for the ages. A sequence in which a female meth head attempts to kill Joe's wife and daughters with an ax ranks as the scariest in any Pickett novel to date; a close second goes to a confrontation between Joe and Dallas's imprisoned, quadriplegic mother. In short, this outing is the most suspenseful yet in this world-class series, setting a new standard for Box. Author tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency. (Mar.)