Written in Bone, by Simon Beckett, $24. Forensic anthropologist Dr. David Hunter lost his family in a tragic accident and tried retiring to rural England to escape his past, but circumstances keep calling him back to his old profession.
In this second book of the series, it’s the puzzling death by combustion of a woman discovered in a crofter’s hut on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. Both feet and one hand remain intact, and nothing else in the room is touched by the fire, which has consumed the rest of the body.
Complications pile up as the island is cut off from the outside world by a raging storm and it becomes clear that a savage killer is still at large.
With limited facilities at his disposal, David can perform only the most rudimentary tests, but they’re enough to identify the victim as a prostitute who did not live on the island.
The forensic details are crucial to the story, but David must also explore the dead woman’s connection to the close-knit community before he can determine who might have killed her, and why.
With well-drawn characters and a highly atmospheric closed setting, this is a traditional detective novel through and through, updated for modern tastes and with a likable detective we look forward to seeing much more of.
The Tomb of Zeus, by Barbara Cleverly, $13. With a spirited, intelligent heroine, a glorious exotic setting, a clever plot, loads of archaeological detail and a touch of romance, there’s nothing not to like in this crisply told first book of a new series by the author of the Joe Sandilands mysteries.
The time is 1928, and the locale is Crete, where Laetitia Talbot, a young, talented and independently wealthy amateur archaeologist has arrived to supervise her first dig in a project organized by Theodore Russell, at whose lavish villa she is a guest. Letty has her work cut out for her in a profession dominated by men, but she’s more than up to the challenge.
Nevertheless, she welcomes the company of her host’s exuberant young wife and quickly becomes fond of her, only to be devastated when Phoebe Russell is found hanged in her boudoir, an apparent suicide. The dig goes on, but tucked into the wealth of archaeological and historical detail is a full-blown English houseparty murder, where nothing is what it seems to be, and nobody is above suspicion.
Anarchy and Old Dogs, by Colin Cotterill, $24. Dr. Siri Paiboun is not your ordinary detective. At 73, he’s the national coroner of Laos, pressed into reluctant service by the Communist Party he has served for years. It’s now the mid-1970s, the government has never delivered on its promises to the people, and Siri passes his days investigating mysterious deaths with the help of his cheerful young nurse, Dtui, and other colleagues.
When a blind retired dentist is run down outside of the post office, it falls to Siri to determine his identity, with his only clue a letter written in invisible ink tucked into the man’s pocket. It turns out to be a code that his widow insists is a chess puzzle but which in fact turns out to be the key to a plot to overthrow the government.
Despite his disillusionment with the status quo, Siri remembers with pleasure his days as a young revolutionary, and together with an old friend who is a senior Communist Party official and other members of his circle he sets out to crack the conspiracy.
Siri’s odd psychic gifts (his frail body is the host for the spirit of a 1,000-year-old Hmong shaman) come less into play in this book than in the first three of this quirky and always entertaining series. But his wry sense of humor remains intact, and a chance meeting with a woman he once trained as a revolutionary proves that there is still plenty of life left in this old dog, even if his best days are long behind him.
Tom and Enid Schantz write a regular column on new mysteries.
