Murder most foul

The news from Old Blighty is good and this week there will be some great reading from across The Pond. 

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Our pick for best traditional mystery (English village, vicar, hidden secrets, felonious fete) has to be G.M. Malliet's Wicked Autumn (St. Martin's, $23.99). You might know Malliet from her trilogy of Detective Chief Inspector St. Just mysteries that made her an Agatha Award-winning writer with Death of a Cozy Writer. Malliet has gone back to basics with a witty, thoughtful tale of village politics and the fatal price of hubris. In Wicked Autumn (on sale Sept. 13), vicar Max Tudor must find the killer of one of his flock. Luckily for the local constabulary, Max Tudor is ex-MI5 and unafraid, if reluctant, to tangle with the darker side of the quaint village of Nether Monkslip. If you like your tea Earl Grey, your scones with marmalade and your crime with a Christie edge, this very British cozy is for you. Spot on.

Also on Tuesday, Chief Inspector Wexford is pulled out of retirement in Ruth Rendell's The Vault (Scribner, $26). A chance meeting on the street with an old acquaintance finds Wexford recruited to advise on a case in which bodies are discovered underground. Wexford must follow a complex trail, only to have his life thrown into turmoil by personal tragedy.

And there is Barbara Cleverly's The Royal Blood (Soho Press, $25) Commander Joe Sandilands finds 1922 a very busy year. Returning to England only to discover that his role at the Metropolitan Police has expanded to include the Special Irish Branch, Sandilands struggles with regional terrorism while clashing with a Russian princess who is running a spy network out of Kensington, a situation that explodes in a high-profile assassination. 
Also, there's Val McDermid's Trick of the Dark (Consortium, $24.95), in which disgraced psychiatrist Charlie Flint agrees to help her old professor at Oxford solve the mystery surrounding the death of her daughter's husband – a case that leads her into the arcane world of Oxford colleges where nothing is what it seems.

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On this side of world, criminous behavior is also rampant and, it would seem, timeless.
Past: In Motor City Shakedown (Minotaur, $24.99), D.E. Johnson's followup to The Detroit Electric Scheme, Will Anderson is wrongly accused of a murder and stumbles on a vast mafia conspiracy at the height of 1911 Detroit's first mob war, one which he combats with the help of detective Riordan and the future members of the Purple Gang.
Present: Michael Brandman brings back Jesse Stone in Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues (Putnam (Penguin , $25.95) This latest entry in the best-selling series continues the story of Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone, whose investigation into a violent series of car thefts is complicated by political pressures, the summer tourist season and the questionable goals of an ambitious PR executive. Brandman was selected by Parker's widow to continue the series; he's the executive producer of the Jesse Stone TV movies.
Future: New York to Dallas (Penguin, $27.95) finds New York homicide cop Eve Dallas in a race against time to prevent a formidable killer from resuming his attacks on child victims and exacting revenge on Eve herself. It is the latest in the J.D. Robb In Death series.