With the political season not taking a break, Ed Gorman’s mystery SLEEPING DOGS is a perfect respite from the headlines. Longtime political advisor Dev Conrad works for Sen. Warren Nichols, who is trying to hold onto his seat while his opponent Jim Lake seems to be gaining ground.

The novel opens with the two candidates about to have another debate, where things will change for everyone involved, once Nichols goes down from either a stroke or a heart attack. Lake comes off as the savior after trying to revive his opponent, but Dev believes that somebody might have screwed around with the dead’s drink.

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THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES proposes one of the greatest “what if”s in modern literature: What if Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were based on real people? That is the line of logic that author Kate Westerbrook, even portraying herself as the niece of one Jane Moneypenny, who — 10 years after her death — has sent Kate her private diaries. It’s a brilliant idea for a series that is now hitting the final book overseas, while in the U.S., we are finally being treated to the first one.

For those unfamiliar with Bond, Miss Moneypenny works for Bond’s boss M. Moneypenny has a very rich history to mine through, thanks to the very clever plotting of Westbrook. We find out all about Moneypenny’s life leading up to joining the service in her youth in Africa to her first meeting with her future employer.

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Had she thought of it, your mother would’ve told you, “Never get involved with a woman who dances with snakes at a carnival.” And from what the protagonist of Ray Garton’s outrageous road-trip novella SERPENT GIRL goes through, your mother would’ve been right. As in, dead-on.

Steven Benedetti is just passing through a California mountain town when he decides to stop at a two-bit carnival, where he’s entranced — or at least his nether regions are — by Carmen, the titular (in every sense of the word) woman whose act consists of writhing about suggestively as reptiles encircle her voluptuous body. Afterward, Benedetti witnesses Carmen in an argument with her boss, sticks up for her and offers to give her a ride (eventually in every sense of the word).

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It’s always best to read from an author who knows his subject inside and out, and can weave together a story the layman can understand. Police officer Michael A. Black does both in RANDOM VICTIM.

What happens to a case that’s so cold, it has icicles forming off it, especially in an election year? You form a task force with the idea that it will get good press, and if the case gets solved, even better. This is what Sgt. Frank Leal had put upon him after a little outburst at a judge, and is thrown into a no-win situation with two green officers and a fellow sergeant who knows Leal shouldn’t be in charge.

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Following the events of THE ELECTRIC CHURCH, Jeff Somers has given us another look into his creation of the dystopian future where bizarre robots run rampant, in THE DIGITAL PLAGUE.

After years of living high on the hog, antihero Avery Cates stills lives and breathes with the criminal element. But it comes as no shock when groups of cops and soldier types try to bring him to a clandestine meeting, which of course, Cates wants nothing to do with — especially not on their terms. But something strange is also going on with Cates: Friends of his are dropping like flies from some mysterious disease.

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Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

THE 5TH WITCH is a ho-hum witch-meets-gangster thriller by Graham Masterton. Bizarre killings are occurring in the City of Angels, and what looks like a mob war is overshadowed by the presence of four of the aforementioned witches. Fortunately, there’s a neighborhood white witch available to investigate and uncover the real reasons behind the grisly deaths. Masterton is a prolific writer, but this isn’t one of his better works; perhaps Lifetime may come calling. There’s nothing very unique in this cross-blending of subject matter, but he does manage to make the concept work the first few pages. Still, it ultimately fails more in conception than execution. A quick, easily forgettable read — kinda like a literary Smarties. —Matt Adder

Medical thrillers aren’t as in vogue as in the past, despite — or perhaps because of — their scenarios becoming ever too close for comfort. Robin Cook had this genre practically to himself, but now that he’s on autopilot, some newbies are taking up the slack, like Michael Palmer and Joshua Spanogle. Add to that list Daniel Kalla, who delivers his latest with COLD PLAGUE. His all-too-real virus tales peg him as fiction’s answer to Richard Preston – a rep worth strengthening with this number about a mad-cow-like disease that rages the systems of animals and humans. It’s just a tad too lengthy, but its science feels legit, which of course, makes it frightening if you let it get to you — something any med-thriller should aspire to achieve.

I may have graduated from college 15 years ago, but I can still remember how entirely terrifying it seemed to join the real world. For artist Kate T. Williamson, she chose to postpone life by staying in her parents’ house for a couple of months to work on a book. That time stretched into more than a year, all chronicled in the autobiographical ink-and-watercolor graphic novel AT A CROSSROADS: BETWEEN A ROCK AND MY PARENTS’ PLACE. It’s not a conventional narrative, but admirably brave and real, full of both joy and depression as Williamson wonders if she isn’t letting life pass her by. She draws with a style that reminds me of Roz Chast, but tidier, and the emotions are as genuine as they come (loves laying in bed at night and hearing the sounds of the train — me, too!). Transitionary spreads depicting the changing of the seasons are gorgeous. She’s an amazing talent.

In the laboratory, sometimes you cure a disease, and sometimes the experiment just blows up in your face. It’s the latter that neuroscientist Simon LeVay explores in WHEN SCIENCE GOES WRONG: TWELVE TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE DISCOVERY. To me, the well-intentioned failures are always the most interesting than the eventual successful, so LeVay’s nonfiction collection of essays is fascinating. They play out like mini-mysteries, and I was particularly disturbed by the account of a Parkinson’s-stricken jogger who underwent highly experimental fetal transplants; not only did they not work, but an autopsy found hair growing in his brain from it. Other chapters of note involve explorers who stupidly descended into an active volcano and a rape case where CSI-style methods fingered the wrong guy. Because LeVay went out of his way to interview the actual people we read about (at least those who agreed to talk), this book has the benefit of being that much more credible. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sometime in the 1960s — 1968, to be exact, DC Comics had the bright idea* to strip Wonder Woman of her dumb-ass costume** and give her a mod makeover that’s equal parts Emma Peel and James Bond. The groovy results are now collected in DIANA PRINCE: WONDER WOMAN – VOLUME ONE, you dig?

So here’s how it all goes down: Diana’s boy toy Steve Trevor is convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and makes a run for it. Meanwhile, she’s lost her powers temporarily***, so the star-spangled shorts get kicked to the curb in favor of high-fashion duds straight from the pages of MS.

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Joe Dunne is a big-city private investigator hired to do a job he doesn’t really want: scaring a local student-preying drug dealer out of town. Nonetheless, Joe does the job well. Perhaps even too well, because then his one-time employer recommends him to a guy who comes in with an even bigger assignment: “I want you to kill five people.”

Joe’s no killer, but the price is awfully right, and could put him smack onto easy street. Such a setup is difficult to resist – for him and us – in Shepard Rifkin’s 1960 novel THE MURDERER VINE, now back in print and unabridged from Hard Case Crime.

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It’s coming to that time when all my reading takes place on the porch so I can enjoy the summer breeze. To mark that occasion, I’ve picked three books that deliver in the fun-in-the-sun variety, be it a story about ships, an old pulp hero or a thief who never, ever seems to get caught.

THE MONA INTERCEPT by Donald Hamilton — At more than 500 pages there is one word to describe this 1980 effort: sprawling. Giving John D. Macdonald a run for his money on the paperback original front, Hamilton came up with a multicharacter story that tells this adventure from a variety of perspectives … which is also its downfall, in my opinion, since it hits the point of overload.

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THE PRICE OF BLOOD is the third book from Declan Hughes, the man who writes nothing but feel-good Irish crime stories … if you think “feel-good” means gut-wrenching and skin-crawling. Again, Hughes paints such a picture — such a disturbing picture — that you can’t tear yourself away from it, no matter how close to the bone the story gets.

Returning from THE COLOR OF BLOOD is P.I. Ed Loy, thrown into a case that would make Lew Archer envious: dealing with priest Vincent Tyrell asking for help in the search of a man named Patrick Hutton, a former jockey who also happened to race for Vincent’s brother F.X., the big man of racing in these parts.

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It’s the familial touches that make Deborah Crombie’s WATER LIKE A STONE — the subtle interactions between people who know each other well, sometimes too well, and how they deal with pain, joy, and transition. These are exemplified when Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner Sgt. Gemma James take a visit to Kincaid’s family in the country for a Christmas visit.

Things aren’t necessarily going so well for their adolescent teenager Kit, and when he meets a sultry siren named Lally who happens to be his cousin, well, things tend to go all pear-shaped. And it doesn’t help when a baby girl is found walled up in a dairy barn.

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Jim Butcher’s DRESDEN FILES is a series I want to love, yet so far like to varying degrees. SMALL FAVOR, the 10th and latest adventure featuring freelance P.I./wizard Harry Dresden, falls short of the level of fun sustained by the past few installments, yet ironically, has delivered the franchise’s biggest commercial punch in its list-topping debut.

With Chicago under heavy snow that builds to blizzard conditions, the novel begins with Dresden under attack by “weregoats” – not a bad way to grab a reader’s attention. Emerging unscathed, he soon is “hired” by Mab, the faerie-queen villainess of Winter Court for a job he doesn’t want, but as the title has it, he owes her.

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It was the original British country-estate murder case. It was investigated by one of the eight detectives who started Scotland Yard. It captured the imagination of Charles Dickens and directly inspired Wilkie Collins. And it all took place at Road Hill in 1860, with the discovery of the throat-slit body of a 3-year-old boy.

Haven’t heard of the case? Good. Because not knowing how it ended will make Kate Summerscale’s account of it – THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER: A SHOCKING MURDER AND THE UNDOING OF A GREAT VICTORIAN DETECTIVE – as suspenseful as any fictional mystery you’re apt to read this year.

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Throw up the devil horns, readers, and crank up WAR PIGS. It’s time to worship at the altar of evil, as Anton LaVey has picked out three books for us to read. All right, not really, but they all have a common bond: the devil and his minions.

KISSES FROM SATAN by George B. Mair – Another in the long run of spies who came out of the cold and into focus after James Bond, Dr. David Grant works against the evils of an organization called SATAN in this 1966 paperback. For you laymen, that stands for Society for Activation of Terror Anarchy and Nihilism.

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Warren Murphy and James Mullaney’s THE NEW DESTROYER: DEAD RECKONING represents the third entry in the reboot of The Destroyer series, and this one goes all the way back to the start of the whole franchise, with its sights set squarely on certain public figures that have been in the news. It might upset some readers, but most people going into a Destroyer novel understand its leanings.

We are introduced to Mustafa Mohammed, the “20th hijacker” on that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001. Mustafa’s problem is that he overslept and is now sitting in a jail cell with only his family Koran as company. We learn of Mustafa’s family history of never becoming sick, no matter the disease that plagued the area. This led the whole family to be rounded up by Saddam’s scientists to be tested with all sorts of chemicals and other forms of pain.

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No Indiana Jones is present in THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but Manda Scott’s novel still has plenty of archaeology-oriented adventure. The hero here is a heroine: Stella, the scholar who’s freshly married to Kit, a Bede’s scholar who’s obsessed with finding the blue-glowing titular object – his holy grail of ancient artifacts.

After much blood, sweat and tears, Kit has located the secret cave of Cedric Owen, the 16th-century physician to whom the skull once belonged, so the newlyweds are busy spelunking as the book begins. They find the skull almost immediately, but something finds them, too.

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Mike Cox – author of THE TEXAS RANGERS: WEARING THE CINCO PESO, 1821-1900 – spent 15 years as spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which means he got to talk to the press about, among other things, the Texas Rangers. How cool is that? Not talking to the press – no one in his right mind wants to do that. And I don’t mean the Texas Rangers baseball team, either. We’re talking about the real deal here: the Cinco Peso.

If you’ve never seen a Texas Rangers’ badge, where have you been all your life? They’re circular, not pointy like the badges you see in Western movies. The five-pointed Texas star is in the center. The badges were originally carved out of pesos, so the first Rangers to wear them were said to be wearing the “cinco peso.”

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As becomes more and more clear with each trade paperback issued, SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE is the greatest comic of the ’90s that no one seems to talk about. SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE: THE HOURMAN AND THE PYTHON is the sixth such collection, with eight issues, two complete story arcs and one damned excellent concept.

Wesley Dodds is like the nerdy version of Bruce Wayne: a bespectacled, mild-mannered, slightly doughy bachelor who moonlights as a crimefighter – in this case, The Sandman, of course, clad in a regular, 1930s-era suit, hat and overcoat, plus the telltale gas mask. His gun emits a gas that acts as a truth serum.

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In the start of a new series from Tom Piccirilli, THE COLD SPOT gives us a new character in the mold of one of the true greats of crime fiction. The best way to sum it up: What if Richard Stark’s Parker became a grandfather, and raised his grandson in the same way of life, only for the two of them to come head to head at some point?

As a young boy, Chase served as his getaway driver for his grandfather Jonah, who’s a take on Parker with a heavy dose of alpha male thrown in. This was the life Chase grew up in after his mother was brutally shot to death, and his father died soon after, not being able to deal with the grief.

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Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

When I was in junior high school back in the mid-’80s, lots of fellow students read the fantasy novels of Terry Brooks, starting with THE SWORD OF SHANNARA. If I were there today, I suspect those same kids would instead have a copy of the new DARK WRAITH OF SHANNARA in their hands – Brooks’ first graphic novel, adapted by Robert Place Napton with art by Edwin David. Set after the events of WISHSONG OF SHANNARA, it follows Jair Ohmsford, the boy whose notes can turn him invisible; an ancient text of evil; and a witch behind it all. There’s plenty of swords, sorcery, clawed creatures and the usual fantasy tropes – imaginative in story and well-done in shades and tones, although probably better served if it were in color. As a newcomer to the SHANNARA world, I was more pleased to see the “making of” features in the back that demonstrated how the book came to be, and who contributed what.

Not long after a Planned Parenthood clinic is bombed, one of its teen clients is found dead in a Dumpster, in L.J. Sellers’ politically charged mystery THE SEX CLUB. Investigating separately are Oregon homicide detective Det. Wade Jackson and understandably shaken youth outreach clinic nurse Kera Kollmorgan. It’s the latter’s discoveries that drive this procedural. Her findings? These kids of today like to get freaky! (Hey, it’s right there in the title.) The prurient nature of the plot makes this CLUB worth a trial membership; it may not break new ground, but is brave in its telling. Clearly Sellers has an agenda here, so if it doesn’t match yours, don’t even start. If it does, you’ll rally behind it.

Military science fiction remains elusive to my tastes. I get caught and confused by all the lingo, nicknames, abbreviations, rank and descriptions of weapons. I had higher hopes for ORPHAN’S JOURNEY by Robert Buettner, based on its appealing cover and its Orbit Books parentage, but registered as another SNAFU with me. Its star is Jason Wander; on the plus side, the futuristic hero fights giant slugs and sea monsters, but over in the minus column, I got lost not long after that. Part of the problem may be that this is the third of a sci-fi series, so Wander’s world may seem like shorthand to fresh enlistees. With so many adventures under Buettner’s belt, I’m sure the ORPHAN series has its loyal soldiers, but I’ll have to respectfully go AWOL.

Not quite an episode guide, tie-in novel or encyclopedia, THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK OF MONSTERS, SPIRITS, DEMONS, AND GHOULS is designed to be a narrative from the himbo-brother duo of The CW’s X-FILES-esque shriek series SUPERNATURAL, only it’s written by Alex Irvine. He apes their smart-aleck tone well as they dish facts and folklore on zombies, poltergeists and creatures of urban legends, most of whom have merited considerable face time on their own episodes. If monsters are your thing, this book is actually fun and can stand alone from the show, so no advance knowledge is needed. With cool illustrations from Dan Panosian, the BOOK is well-designed (save for an ugly font used for journal excerpts) and offers stories within stories. It even made me want to watch the show, which had to be the intent all along. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.