"The sun was going down behind the Big Burger when the alligator came flying in the drive-through window. . . . The manager hung his head. ‘Not again.' " When the opening paragraph reads like this, it's a fair bet that the next several hundred pages will be equally strange and hilarious, and that the writer responsible for it all is Tim Dorsey. The Pope of Palm Beach is Dorsey's 21st book to feature the beloved Serge A. Storms, a psychologically unbalanced—yet exceptionally charismatic—vigilante whose moral compass doesn't always, shall we say, point toward true north. As this installment kicks off in the Florida Keys, Serge and his perpetually stoned sidekick, Coleman, embark on a mad romp through Florida's history and popular culture, all the while dispensing justice whenever they deem it necessary. A particularly amusing (and disturbing) vignette features a Martin Shkreli-esque pharmaceutical magnate who gets his just desserts after unfairly upping (by several thousand percent) the price of a medication needed to save infants from a deadly protozoa infection. Plotting is secondary (or tertiary) to the zany characters and screamingly funny moments here, but don't let that put you off. Dorsey is one of a kind—in equal parts insightful and demented—and the world needs more of that.

SERIAL THRILLS
Meg Gardiner is back with the second installment of her critically acclaimed UNSUB series, Into the Black Nowhere, featuring Caitlin Hendrix—a San Francisco-based detective turned FBI profiler. Newly arrived to the bureau, Caitlin walks the fine line between trying to stand out and trying to blend in—the typical rookie dilemma. But her talents are put to the test when she is tasked with identifying and apprehending the Saturday Night Killer, a serial murderer responsible for five abductions and subsequent killings. The bodies are artistically arranged, surrounded with photos of other dead and missing women in similar poses. This story is reportedly based on the Ted Bundy killings, which baffled law enforcement for years—but should you try to draw too close a comparison between art and life, Gardiner includes a couple of twists to confound you.

A KILLER INHERITANCE
After sustaining two case-related gunshot wounds, defense attorney Dismas Hardy has pretty much decided to give murder cases a pass. But with a certain amount of trepidation, he decides to provide a defense for former client Abby Jarvis, accused of murdering her boss by means of a rather arcane poison. Not coincidentally, Poison is also the title of John Lescroart's 17th Dismas Hardy novel. Abby's defense has some difficulties from the get-go: She's already served time for a different homicide, and a small amount of preliminary investigation suggests she was embezzling company funds to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of eight or nine years. On top of everything else, she was set to inherit a cool million dollars from the murder victim. But hey, this is a mystery, right? So of course, not everything will be as cut and dried as it looks at the outset.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY
England, 1920: Both the country and Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Ian Rutledge are recovering from the devastation of World War I. Rutledge was forced to execute a soldier for insubordination in France, and now he carries that guilt with him along with a fair amount of shell shock—unless he really is seeing the ghost of that soldier. Whatever the case, Charles Todd's latest thriller, The Gate Keeper, offers insight into the nature of war and how its effects linger long after the armistice has been signed. Rutledge finds himself at loose ends after his sister's wedding and decides to take an aimless drive somewhere outside London. On a deserted country road, he happens upon a stopped car, a man lying dead in the roadway—and a woman with blood on her hands. As Rutledge is vastly more experienced than the local constabulary, it is only natural that he spearhead the investigation, which he does with his usual dogged determination and panache. But then there is another murder, and another; the only connection seems to be the small, intricately carved wooden animals found near the scene of each crime. Readers can't ask for more than Todd's masterful plotting, terrific characters and one of the finest protagonists in modern suspense.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

So what if bookkeeper Abby Jarvis was embezzling funds from a business owned by the Carver family for four generations? It doesn't mean she killed her boss, family patriarch Grant Carver. Coming out of semiretirement, series hero Dismas Hardy discovers lots of skeletons rattling about the Carvers' capacious closets.

After three decades as a San Francisco attorney, encouraged by his wife, Dismas Hardy is slowing down while recovering from gunshot wounds from an earlier case. Then Abby Jarvis, a former client, is arrested for the murder of her wealthy lover/employer Grant Wagner, and Hardy is drawn to her case. Two other murders make it clear Abby isn't the killer. Seeking a connection among all three crimes and feeling that his own family may be endangered, Hardy is desperate to make something happen. The Wagner adult children are squabbling over finances, blackmail looms, and nearly everyone has a secret. Not even his policeman friend Abe Glitsky nor his investigator Wyatt Hunt fully appreciate Hardy's situation. In this 17th of the Dismas Hardy legal thrillers (after The Fall), Lescroart avoids much courtroom action, instead relying heavily on the recurring secondary characters familiar to fans of earlier titles, with the San Francisco setting another character. Plenty of attention is given to Hardy's family relations and his wife's unhappiness with his work. VERDICT Readers may guess the solution well before the author reveals it, but Lescroart's fans still will enjoy this one.—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

In bestseller Lescroart's satisfying 20th Dismas Hardy novel (after 2016's The Fall), the San Francisco attorney, who's recovering from two gunshot wounds and looking forward to retiring soon, can't resist defending a former client, Abby Jarvis, against a murder charge. After committing vehicular manslaughter more than a decade earlier and serving 22 months in prison, Abby has cleaned up her act, become a parent, and landed a steady job as a bookkeeper for a plumbing and fixtures company. After Abby's boss, wealthy Grant Wagner, recently died, apparently from a heart attack, his daughter Gloria questioned that conclusion, given her father's healthy lifestyle. The autopsy that Gloria pressed for revealed that Grant was poisoned with aconite, and Abby, who stood to inherit $1 million, was subsequently indicted for the crime. Believing Abby innocent, Hardy begins to search for plausible alternative suspects. Though the final reveal won't shock veteran genre readers, Lescroart does a good job of balancing the whodunit plot line with well-developed portrayals of both major and secondary characters. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency. (Feb.)