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Everybody loves a good mystery. We like to see Nancy Drew sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes deducing, even Stephanie Plum crazily piecing things together. But simply using the mind to solve the crime? So passe. This is the age of science, featuring high-tech procedures and gadgets, and what better way to deliver justice than with a DNA test in hand? So say shows like CSI and Law & Order, and so says Kathy Reichs, author of the Temperance Brennan novels that inspired the TV show Bones.

With her 10th novel, Bones to Ashes, Reichs takes us back into Tempe’s world of horrific crimes, puzzling mysteries, and those oh-so-important scientific solutions. For those unfamiliar with the series, Tempe is the director of forensic anthropology in the province of Quebec, and spends her time working with bones—primarily human ones—using them to determine things such as age, identity and cause of death, especially when ordinary police methods won’t work (decomposition can be such a pain).

In this latest novel, she’s confronted with the extremely old skeleton of a teenage girl. As she helps her on-again off-again beau, Detective Andrew Ryan, with a series of cold cases featuring two dead and three missing girls, Tempe begins to fear that the skeleton she’s working on is part of the pattern. Even more troubling, she believes it may be the skeleton of her friend Evangeline, who disappeared when they were both still children.

What follows is her hunt to track down Evangeline, the missing girls, and the killer while dealing with her mixed feelings for Ryan, her concern for her younger sister, Harry (yes, Harry), and her own personal demons (which include alcoholism, divorce, and an extremely intense stubborn streak).

One of the nice things about a 10th novel is that it means the author has had lots of time to practice. Compare this novel with Reichs’ first, and it’s clear exactly how much that practice has achieved. While Deja Dead was entertaining, Bones to Ashes is far more gripping and fast-paced, the kind of novel you find yourself reading far into the night. Reichs’ characters are appealing, and the mystery is intriguing and disturbingly realistic, right down to the parts that don’t quite get solved at the end. Her writing has also improved over the years, with more structure and fewer of Tempe’s tangential musings to interrupt the narrative.

That said, a few annoying factors still hover like flies around one of Tempe’s corpses. Tempe and Harry, for example, continue to make one stupid, potentially life-threatening decision after another, like charging off unarmed to take down a homicidal maniac. It may be necessary to the plot for them to dive headfirst into dangerous situations, but they move quickly from reckless to ridiculous until the reader wonders why their police buddies haven’t yet slapped them with restraints, or at least monitoring bracelets.

Even more frustrating is Reichs’ tendency to bog down the scientific portions of her story with excess detail. It’s clear that she knows her stuff and wants to share it with the reader, but she comes off sounding like a textbook when all the reader wants to know is, “What happens next?” It’s not fair to say there’s a serial killer on the loose and then spend pages talking about microscopic unicellular plants.

Plants aside, Bones to Ashes is worth a read. Even for those uninitiated to Tempe’s world, it will prove an interesting look at the intersection between crime and science, and unlike CSI, it has no commercials. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

New Orleans author Pia Ehrhardt redefines human relationships in a way that can make a reader flinch, though in a good way. The 11 stories in this inaugural collection are searing in their depiction of the pursuit of love and second chances. One touches on the mystifying and tempestuous relationship between a father and daughter; another on how too much love can sometimes be as damaging as not enough.

Refreshingly, Ehrhardt doesn’t string the reader along with inflated prose or over-the-top characterizations. Her stories are clean, sharp-edged, and imbued with honesty. She somehow manages to strike emotional chords by means of characters who are often morally bankrupt. Add to that the resonance that is New Orleans. The city is so trapped in our collective psyche as synonymous with bad luck and devastation, that the mere mention of the place serves as a metaphor for love itself, cracked perhaps, but unbroken.

The title story is narrated by high school senior Katie, who longs for the attention of her very busy and famous father, the mayor of Texadelphia. She befriends two girls in school whose love for their fathers is often a manipulative—and erotic—ploy to get whatever they want. Katie begins to date Larry, a young guy who works for her father, and suddenly gets her father’s attention. Blurting out at the dinner table one evening that she has had sex with Larry changes the already fragile dynamic of her family and forces a father to see the reality of his daughter’s life in a light most men would rather not.

In “Running the Room,” a woman has no qualms about using her married daughter to hide behind while she carries on an affair with a city councilman, leading her daughter to ponder her own marriage in a blase fashion:

“I’m married, I understand what can happen over time, how you run out of new material and repeat yourself, zone out of your own thoughts because they’re kind of dull, and so what? You go to bed at night and say, was your day any good, dear, mine was fine, and let’s hope tomorrow is like today, and months go by and you lose sight of the fact that you’re way out of range, a hundred miles from thrilling.

In “How It Floods,” while a hurricane brews in the Gulf, a woman’s casual flirtation with a civil engineer concerned about the levee’s holding should disaster strike ends in a way she should have foreseen: “Tricky girls find men who trick them.” In “Stop,” the narrator schools the reader on how to be comforted when love, as it often does, goes frantically, unpredictably, messily awry—or even worse, when the seemingly insurmountably mundane aspects of life force us into going through the motions with love as with everything else.

No one escapes in Ehrhardt’s stories: To love is to burn. Still, somehow, Ehrhardt’s stories have an aspect of survivability, an “it is what it is” sort of a moral. Love may be flawed, but its pursuit is inevitable. Finding it, whenever or wherever, can make you “remember how rare it is to be loved for a minute like you’re new.” [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Hell’s Reunion is a Lucas Rook mystery by Philadelphia lawyer Richard Sand, and if you read crime fiction and haven’t made Rook’s acquaintance, it’s time you did so. This New York ex-cop turned private investigator is making his third series appearance in what may be one of the best-kept secrets in the contemporary hard-boiled genre.

Lucas Rook debuted in Private Justice. This first novel in the series won the Publishers Marketing Association’s Ben Franklin Award for mystery of the year. It was followed by Watchman With a Hundred Eyes. However, as a novel, Hell’s Reunion stands on its own.

Rook isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill PI. He deals with personal issues that seem to have no foreseeable resolution: the welfare of his partner and mentor now in Alzheimer’s darkness and diapers, a fragmented personal relationship and, perhaps primary, the death of his twin brother, another cop killed in the line of duty. He has no clients on retainer but depends on insurance cases and lawyer referrals to pay the bills. One job takes him to 11th Avenue and 49th Street, a location well on the way to gentrification. But “For anybody who had half a memory or any heart, it was still Hell’s Kitchen. The story was a hundred years old: One Irish cop says to another, `This place is hell itself.’ The other one gives it back that, `Hell’s a mild climate. This is Hell’s Kitchen no less.’”

Hell’s Reunion begins with Rook’s quick trip to Florida on a job for “a shyster lawyer” and same-day return to New York City, the apex of the action. Insurance cases are necessary evils, the bread and butter of the PI, and a reference from a past employer nets Rook a not-so-routine engagement. Divorcee Helen Maguire, 52 years old and 171 pounds, broke her neck when she fell down her steps _ and maybe had some help. Her insurance policy carried an AD&D rider _ Accidental Death and Dismemberment _ worth another $50,000. Rook’s investigation as to cause of death develops tangents to her demise from insurance swindlers to a New York mob to a death in Iraq. His interaction with the lead detective on the case, Dwight Graves, who was on the force when Rook’s twin brother was killed, climaxes in an unforgettable scene.

Sand’s writing is not conventional A to B to C in structure. Tension-filled segments are interspersed with interludes of everyday events _ a restaurant meal, a bus ride, doing laundry, living in a building going condo where you can’t afford the buy-in. The New York that Rook works in is not the tourists’ Fifth Avenue or the baby-stroller-filled Upper West Side. His world is filled with ordinary people: Sid Rosen at the garage with his German shepherd, Bear; Joe Oren in his diner, asking Rook for a favor; shine man Jimbo Turner, who gives the best shoeshine in New York City and has a taste for Jersey corn and “swell New Jersey tomatoes.”

Then there’s Rook’s next-balcony neighbor, Grace Savoy, high-fashion model and diva. “Blind as a bat but I’m not stupid,” she always said, as she banked her haute couture dollars. A few deft adjectives and we know them all; we don’t have to have a history lesson. The rhythm of the city is present on every page.

Given his background, Sand might even be the model for Lucas Rook. This native Philadelphian grew up in his hometown’s equivalent of Hell’s Kitchen. In addition to his current career as practicing attorney and political consultant, he’s been a private eye, a fight promoter, and a bodyguard. Unlike his fictional counterpart, this NYU graduate is also a martial-arts master and part-time college professor, and is credited with writing the best-selling nonfiction Protocol, The Complete Handbook of Diplomatic, Official and Social Usage.

With his Lucas Rook series, Sand joins the ranks of other current acclaimed Philadelphia mystery and thriller writers including William Lashner, Lisa Scottoline, David Hiltbrand and Duane Swierczynski. There must be something in the Philadelphia water that’s produced this exemplary crop of contemporary crime fiction practitioners. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

Grub by Elise Blackwell, a University of South Carolina English professor, reveals grubby secrets about the grubbing aspiring novelists undertake, forsaking art to put grub (and bling) on the table.

By novel’s end, you’re likely to rate writers below grubs on the evolutionary scale.

Yes, Blackwell explores all the meanings attached to her title, as well as its past: Her dedication page reads, “This contemporary retelling of George Gissing’s New Grub Street is dedicated to every writer with an unpublished novel.”

If every writer with an unpublished novel bought Blackwell’s, she would be a rich woman, indeed.

New Grub Street, published in 1891 and set in Victorian London, made Gissing’s reputation (it’s considered a classic) but not his fortune—and money is often the point in New Grub Street and Grub. We all like to eat, and some of us prefer caviar.

Blackwell is faithful to Gissing’s attitude, plot and characters. She focuses on a smoothie out for money and fame but intrigued by the daughter of a bitter, fading man-of-letters: Jackson Miller, Margot and her father Andrew Yarborough.

Equally important are a novelist struggling to sell a second novel, produce a third and not lose his ambitious wife, and the wife, who turns to her own pragmatic pen: Eddie and Amanda Renfros.

Here’s Jackson at a writers’ conference party: “Impressing Yarborough was the most important move he could make in his career, he calculated, at least until he had actually written a book of his own.”

Here’s Amanda, deciding to write a novel: “Nothing too light or vapid—this was, after all, the post 9/11 world—but nothing too complicated either. From studying best-seller lists and reading the book reviews in women’s magazines, she knew that the most popular trends were telepathic or at least empathetic animals, themes of loss and emotional restoration, and novels about people in paintings or the painters who painted them.”

Here’s Jackson designing his future best-seller: “I’m filling it with stuff that the book-club and college crowds will eat up. Different typescripts, the occasional blank page, a hodgepodge of diary pages and letters. ... The idea is to make the reader feel clever. ...”

Jackson later tells Margot, “I’m moving around attractive stockbrokers, cocaine, gigolos, a dash of deviant sex.”

When Eddie succumbs to an outline, a plot (and drink), in his desire to sell another book, his agent complains that his work is a “bit quiet.”

Eddie objects: “There’s a plane crash, adultery, bribery, surgery on a child’s ear, a world premiere, a drunken cellist and a beautiful shameless slut of a violin player.”

The only bearable characters are Margot and pitiful Henry Baffler, who willingly starves as he experiments with writing philosophies, a new “New Realism,” followed by “open and circular.”

Henry participates, at the Museum of Ultra-Contemporary Art, in an exhibit of living writers: “… considerably less popular than the fecal art show...” and ends up selling flash (extremely short) fiction on the street.

Margot is writing The Reluctant Leper, which deals with 19th-century Louisiana and Carville, its leper colony. She stands in for author Blackwell; her second book was The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, which deals with a 1927 Louisiana flood and contains a character sent to Carville.

This is a catch to enjoyment of the book: inside references and jokes that will pass most of us by. Another catch: Every writer is anticipating, or victim to, agents’ and publishers’ definitions of the market, but we get only tiny glimpses of these puppetmasters.

On the other hand, if you enjoy reprehensible characters clawing their way toward fortune and fame (or disaster)—certainly the theme of many a best-seller—you’ll enjoy Blackwell’s ironic take on the writing life. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

For the most part, 14-year-old April Lundquist has the ordinary life of any neighborhood kid. Her bike takes her everywhere, her older brother and his friends tease her relentlessly, and her mom makes her drag her 5-year-old brother wherever she goes.

Set in the ‘70s—weird at the time, sweet in retrospect—the novel definitely has an innocence to it.

But it’s also set in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, where some of the most notorious New York crime families are rumored to live. When April’s parents considered moving there from another part of Brooklyn, the alleged Mafia presence gave them pause. But their new neighborhood means having a house instead of an apartment and, thanks to the scary guys in expensive suits, there’s not much petty crime.

Author Lurie, who writes in an afterword that she was a teenager in the mid-to-late ‘70s, lets the tokens of the era blend in nicely with April’s life. Dominick, the long-haired boy April loves, likes to sit on a rusty folding chair in front of his building and play songs from Quadrophenia on his guitar. Also, someone spray-painted “disco sucks” on a wall at the park.

April couldn’t agree more. She loves the Dead and Zeppelin and scoffs at Spandex and platforms. She doesn’t even mind that Larry, the kid across the street, uses trash cans for a drum set, since he usually blasts The Who by Numbers at the same time.

Given all this normalcy, it’s a deliciously scary surprise when April and Brandi, her best friend, get involved with the mob. Sort of, anyway. April tells us in the book’s very first sentence that “three murderers live on my block,” but of course no one knows if they’re really murderers. Their official line is that the Mafia doesn’t even exist.

In any event, one of the local tough guys—Salvatore “Soft Sal” Luciano—happens to be her friend Larry’s dad. Larry has always been different, a bit behind other guys his age, and Mr. Luciano wants April and Brandi to look after him. They’re happy to do it, but when hundred-dollar bills start appearing in their textbooks, they can’t help but feel a little queasy.

While April is getting on the mobsters’ good side, her older brother Matt is flirting with their bad side. He’s fallen for Bettina Boccelli, daughter of a notorious crime boss who doesn’t want her dating anyone outside of the fold. Suddenly, two-thirds of the Lundquist siblings are involved with the mob.

Improbable, but Lurie manages to make it believable, though the story is realistic about the dangers of getting in over your head.

I like the small surprises that make this book feel real. In other young adult novels the female protagonist might feel freakish because she wears all black. April sticks out because she’s a Nordic natural blonde. But her tall-and-blondness doesn’t mean she’s sunny and simple. In fact, April is a little, well, twisted. The proof is the books she’s always carrying around: Heart of Darkness, Brave New World. One night she overhears her parents having a worried conversation about her behavior, and she finally realizes it: “I was the oddball, the enigma, the embarrassing question mark in our family.”

April is in touch with her dark side, but she’s upbeat and athletic too, and never hesitates to cream the guys in her neighborhood at tennis. She has a matter-of-fact feminism that made me smile, an ability to stand up for herself that feels fresh, easy, youthful, and empowering.

Like any solid young adult novel, this one chronicles a young character’s route to self-realization. It’s the story’s trappings—Fat Albert, Welcome Back, Kotter, and Pink Floyd, not to mention pinstripe suits and little cups of espresso—that make her experiences so charming. [Amazon, Amazon UK]

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” Jane Austen wrote at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, unknowingly setting the framework for nearly two centuries of books, plays, TV series and movies revolving around the pursuit of love.

The latest Austen wave includes a spate of summer books, movies (Becoming Jane and The Jane Austen Book Club) and plans by PBS to broadcast adaptations of the English author’s six novels, starting in January.

Among the books are Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, the tale of a Los Angeles woman who is transported back to early 19th-century England. It is a delightful exercise, for haven’t we all dreamed of going back in time and living the lives of our favorite heroines?

From the opening page when Courtney Stone wakes up in a strange bed to be confronted by a man and woman wearing clothes that look as if they were “cast-offs from the Merchant-Ivory costume department,” the cleverness never stops.

Rigler tackles Courtney’s trip back through time with skill and attention to detail—chamber pots, body odors, the absence of regular baths and lack of hair washing are just a few examples. She intelligently puts Courtney, and therefore the reader, bang in the middle of another world and another time.

Courtney’s love of Jane Austen helps her adapt to her new identity as Jane Mansfield, and there is a Darcy-like hero to make the heart beat faster and forget all those failed romances back (or is it forward) in the 21st century.

For the reader, there is an air of delicious uncertainty. Will Courtney want to return to her old world, or will she stay wrapped in the cocoon of a high-bred English woman with a dashing suitor in hot pursuit? Jane Austen (1775-1817) fans know what they would choose, and Rigler doesn’t disappoint.

Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love, by Patrice Hannon, is a thoroughly original self-help book on—to quote from Emma, “all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life depends.”

Hannon turns Austen, who never married, into a modern-day Ann Landers, having her deal with 21st-century problems, such as a woman who is filled with rage at the behavior of her fellow New Yorkers, by examining what Elizabeth, Jane, Emma, Marianne and other Austen heroines would do. “Please sit down and pour yourself a glass of Constantia wine before your swelling heart bursts with anger.”

There is comforting advice for a woman who signs herself “Plain Jane” and bewails the fact that she is “average-looking” and lives in a city where “women outnumber men three to one. The competition is fierce!”

The question allows Hannon/Austen to point out that the 19th-century heroines “are not as a rule the most beautiful women” but capture their men with other gifts such as liveliness, humor, good sense and sweetness that ensure the “face will continue to please as years pass.”

And please, Hannon does. By blending advice, insights and details about Austen’s novels, the English professor has served up a very tasty feast indeed. [Amazon, Amazon UK]