Earthly remains /

HO, HO, HO! Let Jolly Santa hand out his boring, politically correct presents to all the good boys and girls. Here comes Bad Santa with a sack of the year's best crime and mystery thrillers, full of psychos and siekos for the naughty kids. First to crawl out of the bag is Jo Nesbo's monstrous villain in the thirst (Knopf, $26.95), a serial killer who stalks his victims on Tinder, rips out their throats with dentures made of metal spikes and drinks their blood. The good citizens of "melancholic, reserved, efficient" Oslo are paralyzed with fear and loathing, but the murderer's bizarre M.O. alerts Harry Hole, Nesbo's gloomy Norwegian detective, that this repulsive killer is having fun with Harry, tempting him to come out and play. The crooked New York cops in Don Winslow's excellent police procedural, THE FORCE (Morrow/ HarperCollins, $27.99), have minds in the gutter and share a vocabulary as ripe as rotten fruit. But just because they're no-good crooks doesn't mean these roughnecks can't police their turf. They pull off the biggest heroin bust in memory, put down an all-out gang war and handle quotidian misdeeds like regular gentlemen. Their methods are extremely thoughtful and inventive; they just aren't entirely lawful. Of all the places where you really do not want to meet a couple of nut cases with rifles, a zoo full of "wild things in boxes" ranks high. Gin Phillips taps that primal fear in FIERCE KINGDOM (Viking, $25), a heart-thumping thriller about a mother who finds herself and her 4-year-old son running for their lives among cages of unhappy wildlife after two crack marksmen start hunting down zoo visitors like animals. Phillips's resourceful heroine gives new meaning to the term "tiger mom." Meet the great guys who work at Oasis Limo Services in the DRIVER (Dutton, $26). The plot of Hart Hanson's first novel is ragged, but his furiously funny storytelling voice is full of moral indignation on behalf of unstable war vets like Ripple, the dispatcher who lost both legs in Afghanistan and now draws violent cartoons all the livelong day, and Tinkertoy, a mechanical genius with a scary case of post-traumatic stress paranoia. Even Skellig, the levelheaded owner of the cab service, hears the voices of men he's killed in battle ("troubletroubletroublebadtrouble") while he's driving. With racial barriers slowly dropping in the 1950s, token black cops are badly needed on the Atlanta police force. But as Thomas Mullen lets it be known in LIGHTNING MEN (37lnk/Atria, $26), Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith are also valuable assets in neighborhoods where white residents are literally up in arms over the black families buying homes on their blocks. As the son of a Baptist minister, Boggs is a member of the black aristocracy, a beneficiary of "preacher money and a preacher house, even a preacher car." Black vs. White doesn't begin to cover the complexity of these diverse relationships. Ever since Harry Bosch was forced into retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department, Michael Connelly's tough-as-oldboots hero has been taking on cold cases for the San Fernando force, working from a makeshift office in the old drunk tank of the county jail. ("Sometimes I think I can still smell the puke.") In two kinds of TRUTH (Little, Brown, $29), Bosch goes undercover as an elderly oxycodone abuser to take down a gang of international racketeers who are moving prescription drugs in and out of the country by enslaving aged addicts desperate to feed their habits. That's pretty ugly - and a new one on us. Jack Reacher ("Bigfoot," to those awed by his 6-foot-5-inch, 250-pound bulk) is right where we want him in Lee Child's new novel, THE MIDNIGHT LINE (Delacorte, $28.99): on an endless ribbon of highway, hitching rides and serving as "human amphetamine" for tired truckers. A chance visit to "the sad side of a small town" leads Reacher on a quest to track down a criminal enterprise preying on wounded veterans, a scam that saddens our hero and makes him very, very angry. To the East Texas natives in Attica Locke's bluebird, bluebird (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26), Highway 59 is both a lifeline and an escape route. Everyone headed in or out of town makes a pit stop at Geneva Sweet's Sweets, including Darren Mathews, a righteous Texas Ranger working his way through every hamlet from Laredo to Texarkana, looking for the murderer of the black man and the white woman whose bodies were fished out of the muddy waters of the Attoyac Bayou. The plot has legs, and Locke's blues-infused idiom lends a strain of melancholy to her lyrical style. The great port of London churns with activity in Anne Perry's rich, if blood-splattered, Victorian mystery, an echo of MURDER (Ballantine, $28), which finds Commander William Monk of the Thames River Police hunting down the assassins of Hungarian immigrants who fled oppression only to be greeted with bitter hostility in their new home. "It's fear of ideas," Monk's wife, Hester, says. "Everyone you don't understand because their language is different, their food, but above all their religion." EARTHLY REMAINS (Atlantic Monthly, $25), Donna Leon's latest Venetian mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best - and one of her saddest - dealing with the relentless polluting of the great lagoon. "We've poisoned it all," mourns Davide Casati, an aged boatman who treats Brunetti to languorous tours of the floating islands on the graceful, gondola-like rowing boat he built with his own hands. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

*Starred Review* Yes, the soul-destroying demands of fighting for justice in a fundamentally unjust world have been taking their toll on Venetian police commissario Guido Brunetti, and, yes, an uncharacteristically rash action during an interrogation has earned him a two-week leave of absence, but, Guido, really, shouldn't you know that the heroes of crime-fiction series can't take vacations? The hellhounds of that unjust world are on your tail always, even when you retreat to a small island on the far end of the lagoon for some therapeutic rowing. It all starts perfectly, as Guido settles in at a lavish villa owned by his in-laws and spends his days rowing with the villa's caretaker, Davide, an enigmatic beekeeper with a troubled past. Then Davide disappears, and Guido is drawn into the search. Two of Leon's most powerful themes the all-pervasive corruption at the heart of Italian society and the environmental abuses that threaten Venice's water quickly bob to the surface. Soon Guido's feeling of sun-drenched calm is clouded over with the melancholic pallor that he had hoped to leave behind at the office. Leon's multifaceted portrait of a man overburdened with human tragedy emerges forcefully here, as the lagoon itself, beautiful on the surface but containing the seeds of its own destruction, stands as a gripping metaphor for the bad choices and intractable dilemmas that infect us all. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Leon has been living and writing in Venice for 30 years, and her novels, with their unparalleled evocation of landscape and sensitivity to character, have attracted an audience that encompasses fiction readers of all kinds.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist

Bestseller Leon's enticing 26th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (after 2016's The Waters of Eternal Youth) finds the Venetian policeman at headquarters one hot July day, questioning an arrogant lawyer accused of drugging a young woman he met at a party who subsequently died. When Brunetti has a heart seizure during this contentious interview, he winds up in the hospital. Prescribed complete rest, he later takes his wife's suggestion of staying at a villa on a sparsely inhabited island in the Venetian Lagoon. There he befriends Davide Casati, the villa's caretaker and a keeper of bees, some of which are mysteriously dying. Then, during a fierce storm, Davide disappears. Brunetti undertakes a search that leads to the discovery of his friend's body and boat. Was Davide's death an accident? He had been grief stricken since his wife's death, Brunetti learns, and recently remorseful over the demise of his beloved bees. Along the way to the poignant ending, Brunetti develops insights into nature and humankind's failure to protect it, as well as the nature of guilt and its role in a man's life. Agent: Susanna Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This series entry begins at the Questura in a hilarious scene as Brunetti feigns a heart attack to save the ever faithful Pucetti from a major blunder. This "attack" earns him a leave that takes him to a different setting in a villa on Sant'Erasmo-a place of rest, reflection, and reading. Brunetti is tied to Venice in his conversations with Paola, as she is the only recurring character that has a significant role-favorites Signorina Elettra, -Griffoni, Vianello and Pucetti shine in cameo roles. Then David Casati, the caretaker, goes missing after a storm, and Brunetti feels compelled to investigate. Leon's subtle humor is in evidence as is her ability to create the most somber of scenes. This work is elegantly read by David Colacci, who lends the perfect atmosphere to a beautifully done mystery. VERDICT Leon remains at the top of her game, but those who have exhausted her repertoire may turn to the entertaining and reflective series of Andrea Camilleri, Martin Walker, Colin Cotterill, and Louise Penny. ["Longtime fans of this long-running series will find many of their favorite elements in this latest worthy entry: Venice architecture and food, rampant corruption, and a patient yet more world-weary Brunetti": LJ Xpress Reviews 3/3/17 review of the Atlantic hc.]-Sandra C. Clariday, Cleveland, TN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Commissario Guido Brunetti, taking two weeks away from the Venetian Questura for complete rest and solitude, gets both more and less solitude than he bargained for and about the same amount of rest as when he's home.An impetuous inspiration about how to save a subordinate from embarrassment ends up sending Brunetti to the hospital, where he's diagnosed with high stress and urged to take some time off. His thoughtful wife, Paola, comes up with the perfect retreat: a villa her aunt owns on the nearby island of Sant'Erasmo. Packing four volumes of the classics, Brunetti (The Waters of Eternal Youth, 2016, etc.) prepares to soothe his soul by doing something physical by day and reading Pliny by night. The something physical he prescribes himself is rowing with Davide Casati, the villa's 70-something custodian, who, to Brunetti's delight, turns out to be an old friend of his father. But Casati is haunted by sadness over his dead wife, a mysterious ailment that's killing the bees he keeps and loves, and a secret he's not willing to confess even to his old friend's son. "Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?" he asks Brunetti enigmatically, shortly before the Commissario finds him drowned beneath his overturned boat. It's an accident, of course, but Brunetti's keen judgment, which never takes a day off, is convinced that the timing of Casati's death is anything but coincidental and sets out to findnot the person who killed him (fans of this highly regarded series will know better than to expect much drama in this revelation) but the reason he died. Perhaps the most minimal of all Leon's mysteries, with no suspects to speak of and few details of the Commissario's domestic life or his eternal professional tussles at the Questura. Think of this barely-a-case as a vacation for your own soul. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.