Reading Ahead: September 2015, part 4

It feels like summer is zipping by in a blink! For those who love the cooler temps of autumn, perhaps a mystery and a cup of tea will be in your future soon? If so, here are a few to look forward to.

Corridors of the Night, by Anne Perry. Twenty-first in Perry's highly popular William Monk mystery series, Corridors of the Night finds Monk, now commander of the Thames River Police, and his wife Hester doing battle with two scientists whose obsession with healing has turned to homicide. The monomaniacal Rand brothers—Magnus, a cunning doctor, and Hamilton, a genius chemist—are ruthless in their pursuit of a cure for what was then known as the fatal “white-blood disease.” In London’s Royal Naval Hospital annex, Hester is tending one of the brothers’ dying patients—wealthy Bryson Radnor—when she stumbles upon three weak, terrified young children, and learns to her horror that they’ve been secretly purchased and imprisoned by the Rands for experimental purposes. But the Rand brothers are too close to a miracle cure to allow their experiments to be exposed. Before Hester can reveal the truth, she too becomes a prisoner. As Monk and his faithful friends scour London’s grimy streets and the beautiful English countryside searching for her, Hester’s time, as well as the children’s, is quickly draining away. This long-running series always hits the best-sellers list for a reason.

Dance of the Bones, by J.A. Jance. J. P. Beaumont and Brandon Walker, two of New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance’s most acclaimed series characters, join forces for the first time in one of the most suspenseful works of her career. Years ago, Amos Warren, a prospector, was gunned down out in the desert and Sheriff Brandon Walker made the arrest in the case. Now, the retired Walker is called in when the alleged killer, John Lassiter, refuses to accept a plea deal that would release him from prison with time served. Lassiter wants Brandon and The Last Chance to find Amos's "real" killer and clear his name.

Sixteen hundred miles to the north in Seattle, J.P. Beaumont is at loose ends after the Special Homicide Investigation Team, affectionately known as S.H.I.T., has been unexpectedly and completely disbanded. When Brandon discovers that there are links between Lassiter’s case and an unsolved case in Seattle, he comes to Beau for help. Those two cases suddenly become hot when two young boys from the reservation, one of them with close ties to the Walker family, go missing. Can two seasoned cops, working together, decipher the missing pieces in time to keep them alive?

Trigger Mortis, by Anthony Horowitz. Horowitz incorporates original, never-before-published material from 007 creator Ian Fleming as he returns James Bond to his 1950s heyday, with all the hallmarks of an original Fleming adventure and features welcome familiar faces, including M and Miss Moneypenny. Bond has just returned victorious from his showdown with Auric Goldfinger in Fort Knox. By his side is the glamorous and streetwise Pussy Galore, who played no small part in his success. As they settle down in London, the odds of Galore taming the debonair bachelor seem slim—but she herself is a creature not so easily caught.

Meanwhile, the struggle for superiority between the Soviet Union and the West is escalating. In an attempt to demonstrate Soviet strength, SMERSH plans to sabotage an international Grand Prix in the hot zone of West Germany. At the Nürburgring Racing Circuit, Bond must play a high-speed game of cat and mouse to stop them, but when he observes a secretive meeting between SMERSH's driver and a notorious Korean millionaire, it becomes clear that this is just the infamous organization's opening move. Horowitz has done remarkable things with Sherlock Holmes cannon in recent years (The House of Silk, Moriarty), so there's no reason to doubt he'd do the same with Bond.