The Devotion of Suspect X

The Devotion of Suspect X 
Keigo Higashino, Alexander O. Smith (Translator)
ISBN 0312375069

Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day to extort money from her, threatening both her and her teenaged daughter Misato, the situation quickly escalates into violence and Togashi ends up dead on her apartment floor. Overhearing the commotion, Yasuko’s next door neighbor, middle-aged high school mathematics teacher Ishigami, offers his help, disposing not only of the body but plotting the cover-up step-by-step.

When the body turns up and is identified, Detective Kusanagi draws the case and Yasuko comes under suspicion. Kusanagi is unable to find any obvious holes in Yasuko’s manufactured alibi and yet is still sure that there’s something wrong. Kusanagi brings in Dr. Manabu Yukawa, a physicist and college friend who frequently consults with the police. Yukawa, known to the police by the nickname Professor Galileo, went to college with Ishigami. After meeting up with him again, Yukawa is convinced that Ishigami had something to do with the murder. What ensues is a high level battle of wits, as Ishigami tries to protect Yasuko by outmaneuvering and outthinking Yukawa, who faces his most clever and determined opponent yet.

Keeping Secrets (Mimi Patterson & Gianna Maglione #1)

Keeping Secrets (Mimi Patterson & Gianna Maglione #1)
Penny Micklebury
ISBN 1562800523

Mickelbury's debut offers a pair of lesbian sleuths--an Italian cop and a black reporter--who spend work time tracking down a serial killer and play time pursuing each other. Four closeted gay professionals, three men and one woman, have been murdered in as many months. Despite efforts by Lt. Gianna Maglione, head of the Washington, D.C., police's Hate Crimes Unit, to impose a press blackout, a gay newspaper editor has picked up on the pattern of deaths. Mimi Patterson is assigned the story and gets her first surprise when she realizes Gianna is the luscious woman she recently spotted at the gym. Mimi is also concerned for her friend Freddy Schuyler, a former football player who is being pestered by gays who want him to come out--although it could ruin the popular nightclub he now runs. Professionally, Gianna and Mimi circle each other warily, yet they must come to terms with a mutual attraction so powerful that when one is targeted by the killer, the other is also drawn into danger. Although there is a disappointing inevitability to the identity of the killer, Gianna and Mimi imbue the tale with a certain winning zest.
©1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Out

Out
Natsuo Kirino
ISBN 1400078377

With volcanic urgency, Kirino's story erupts onto the page with a searing heat, flowing like lava to a remarkable finish. Facing the daily burdens of slavish work conditions, stale marriages, and a society refusing to show them a proper respect, the women on the nightshift at a suburban Tokyo factory are all looking for one thing -- a way out. When pretty young Yayoi takes a beating from her deadbeat husband, her coworkers do little more than help their friend keep pace with the line. But a new kind of sisterhood emerges when Yayoi requires assistance in disposing of her dead husband's body.

Masako Katori emerges as a tenaciously determined leader in the dangerous cover-up, and with the others, provides readers with a disturbing vision of the lengths a human mind will travel in its quest for freedom. For Kirino's women aren't ruthless murderers; they're hardworking housewives with dignity, desperate for respect.

White Heat

White Heat
M.J. McGrath
ISBN 023074818X

Nothing on the tundra rotted ...The whole history of human settlement lay exposed there, under that big northern sky. There was nowhere here for bones to hide. On Craig Island, a vast landscape of ice north of the Arctic Circle, three travellers are hunting duck. Among them is expert Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk; a woman born of this harsh, beautiful terrain. The two men are tourists, experiencing Arctic life in the raw, but when one of the men is shot dead in mysterious circumstances, the local Council of Elders in the tiny settlement of Autisaq is keen to dismiss it as an accident. Then two adventurers arrive in Autisaq hoping to search for the remains of the legendary Victorian explorer Sir James Fairfax. The men hire Edie - whose ancestor Welatok guided Fairfax - along with Edie's stepson Joe, and two parties set off in different directions. Four days later, Joe returns to Autisaq frostbitten, hypothermic and disoriented, to report his man missing. And when things take an even darker turn, Edie finds herself heartbroken, and facing the greatest challenge of her life..

No Time to Die

No Time to Die
Grace F. Edwards
ISBN 0553579568

A serial killer stalks Harlem's Strivers' Row...

On a sweltering Harlem summer night, ex-cop Mali Anderson steps out to celebrate her friend Claudine's divorce from a handsome, cheating deadbeat who couldn't keep his fists out of her face. But Claudine doesn't show up for their dinner. Instead, she is found brutally murdered in her elegant home just off Strivers' Row, and Mali has no doubt Claudine's ex did it. Despite his threats, she can't keep out of the investigation. Especially when another woman meets the same savage, bizarre fate....

The two murders are just the start of a trail that leads street-smart Mali through the trash-talking and wise philosophizing of barbershops, beauty parlors, and bars...and toward a cunning killer whose homegrown hatred is zeroing in on Mali herself.

Death's Favorite Child

Death's Favorite Child
Frankie Y. Bailey
ISBN 1570721467

African-American, 38, a crime historian, Lizzie Stuart has spent most of her life in Drucilla, Kentucky. When her grandmother dies, Lizzie decides it is time for a vacation. She joins her friend Tess for a week in Cornwall, England, in the resort town of St. Regis. Lizzie finds her vacation anything but restful when she becomes an eyewitness to a murder and the probable next vicitim.

Dead Time (Marti MacAlister #1)

Dead Time (Marti MacAlister #1)
Eleanor Taylor Brand
ISBN 0312977190

Black, widowed, and mother of two, police detective Marti MacAlister has relocated from Chicago to Lincoln Prairie, Illinois, only to be confronted with small-town attitudes and a partner who's not sure women belong in homicide. But Matthew "Vik" Jessenovik's old-fashioned thinking is far less compelling a problem than a brutal murder at the Cramer Hotel, home to the elderly, poor, and mentally ill.

When Marti and Vik discover that two abandoned children might have seen the killer, the case becomes even more urgent as Marti must use all of her street smarts to find a killer who is desperate to eliminate any possible witnesses to the crime— even if it's two innocent homeless kids...