Immoral is a stunning debut from Brian Freeman, a communications and marketing strategist from Minnesota. It appears to be the first of a series, and the featured detective, Duluth policeman Jonathan Stride, is surely going to return. The question is where he'll end up, and with whom.

Stride is a sufficiently complex character to keep any story moving, but Freeman has also built him a superb plot. It begins with a game, one that thrills and kills. Then it skips to a crime scene without a body. Stride is walking the scene, putting himself into the mind of a 17-year-old girl who's missing. Everything about Rachel Deese is out there. She flaunts her beauty, her sexuality, her brains and her contempt.

Most of all, she flaunts her hatred of her mother, Emily Stoner. She blames Emily for her adored father's death, and for marrying Graeme Stoner for his money and social position. Even the family minister believes Rachel's disappearance is an attempt to hurt her mother. But Stride remembers another girl who disappeared. Kerry McGrath has been gone a year. No body, No crime. No suspect.

From that beginning, Freeman builds a spellbinding saga of murder and retribution. From a case with no body or clues, a suspect emerges, but in court the case seems lost. Then another series of crimes emerges.

Freeman builds in some compelling characters, who seem destined to reappear, such as Stride's smart and intuitive partner, Maggie Bei, and his politically savvy boss. There's a love interest and a couple of clever cops from Las Vegas. Let's hope Freeman and Stride return soon.

Devotees of the Golden Age of Mystery have a feast in store this year. Several fine authors, including Rennie Airth and Jacqueline Winspear, have been inspired by the elegant settings and characters of the 1920s and '30s. Add to that list Catriona McPherson of Scotland.

You need a stellar sense of timing to pull off a Golden Age mystery. That makes this novel all the more exciting. It's McPherson's first and, while there are a couple of places where coincidence replaces deduction, it's a fine story with a great puzzle plot.

Our heroine is Dandelion (Dandy) Gilver. The date is spring, 1922. The place is Perthshire in Scotland. The rural landowners of Britain are finding it ever more difficult to maintain their standard of living. Great Houses require great upkeep. Servants aren't as cheap as they were, and incomes are down.

Dandy's husband, Hugo, likes to tend his farms and order his year around the shooting season. Her children are away in school. So when a friend calls to request her skills at deduction, she's curious. When the friend offers her £500 plus expenses, she's convinced.

Dandy's task is to find out if Lena Duffy's dazzling diamond collection was stolen at an Armistice Ball. Her investigation leads to murder and more. Fans of Dorothy L. Sayers will think "Aha! I've read this before." There are some surface similarities to The Nine Tailors, but in style, McPherson is much closer to Margery Allingham than to Sayers. Lots of fun, and there's promise of more Dandy to come.

Where on earth do people like George W. Bush and his Texas cohorts come from? Well, after you read Mark Gimenez's perfectly poisonous paean to Dallas society and Dallas lawyers, you'll know. The men are venal, the women are stupid and even more venal and the lawyers are greedy exploiters. Even the kids are hateful.

All that is the background for a well-constructed legal thriller by a Dallas lawyer who tossed over the Big Bucks and the Big Office and who the marketing folks are calling the next John Grisham. He may be, but not yet. This one is too committed to revealing the inner world of Big Texas Money.

Scott Fenny is a poor boy made good: football hero, married to an SMU cheerleader. partner in the most prestigious law firm in Dallas, making nearly $1-million a year. His car is a Ferrari and his home is a mansion.

When an insincere speech about legal idealism lands him a pro bono case, his client turns out to be Shawanda Jones, prostitute, junkie and mother of eight-year-old Pajamae. Shawanda is accused of murdering the son of a Dallas millionaire who happens to be a U.S. Senator. The whole of Dallas society, including Fenny's wife, wants to see Shawanda convicted.

But Fenny isn't convinced of her guilt. He decides to mount a real defence. He takes Pajamae in, outraging his wife and partners. Suddenly, his comfortable world is exposed as a racist, egocentric, shallow little pool. But does he really want to jeopardize everything for a "junkie whore"?

I am not a fan of Vince Flynn's Mitchell Rapp series for the same reason I wasn't a fan of Tom Clancy's novels. There are plenty of good plots in their thrillers, but the central characters always seem like cartoons and there's far too much emphasis on technology for me. So I was surprised to find myself reading Consent To Kill with a different opinion.

Enter an ex-Stasi enforcer who promises to execute Rapp for a huge price. But Mitch isn't so easy to kill. He goes on the run, but who can he trust? Even the halls of the CIA may not be safe. As always, Flynn provides a lot of "insider" details about Washington's War on Terror, CIA black ops and other grisly details that seemed like fictional twaddle until we all read about it in The New York Times. In Washington, truth really is becoming stranger than fiction.

This is an auspicious beginning for a series of crime fiction titles from Touchwood Editions of Nanoose Bay, B.C. Seaweed on the Street is a classic lost-child plot of the type favoured by Ross Macdonald. But the voice of Silas Seaweed, West Coast Salish aboriginal policeman, is Evans's own, and it works beautifully.

Silas moved from detective on the homicide squad in Victoria to local tribal policeman. Into his purview comes Jimmy Scow, who spent five years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Seaweed was still on the Victoria PD squad when Scow was accused of murdering Harry Cunliffe, Jr. in Ribblesdale, the palatial home of Victoria billionaire Calvert Hunt. Now, Scow is back in Victoria, accused of trespassing on Hunt's property.

Transitions are not Evans's strong suit, so we don't really understand why Calvert Hunt decides to hire Seaweed to search for his long-missing daughter Marcia. Silas takes the job and it leads him first to Seattle and then to Reno, Nev. Along the way, he's shot and a man is killed. The trail leads back to Canada, to a strange and damaged woman and her child.

Evans makes great use of West Coast aboriginal mythology and religion, informing the complex character of Silas Seaweed. Unfortunately, Evans has also imbued him with the clichés of the modern detective: He's handsome, hunky, sympathetic, sensitive and good with his fists.

The plot also has a few creaks, bright lights of intuition and a convenient coincidence or two, but these don't detract much from reading pleasure. Let's hope Silas Seaweed returns.

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