Mystery Bestsellers for August 10, 2007

A list of the top ten mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending August 10, 2007 has been posted on the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books website.

No change in the top five bestsellers this week: The Quickie, The Tin Roof Blowdown, The Secret Servant, Lean Mean Thirteen, and First Among Sequels retain their positions from last week.

One of the two new mysteries on this list this week debuts in the 6th position: The Burnt House, the 16th mystery in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series by Faye Kellerman. At 8:15 in the morning, a small commuter plane carrying forty-seven passengers crashes into an apartment building in Granada Hills, California. Shock waves ripple through Los Angeles, as LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker works overtime to calm rampant fears of a 9/11-type terror attack. But a grisly mystery lives inside the plane's charred and twisted wreckage: the unidentified bodies of four extra travelers. And there is no sign of an airline employee who was supposedly on the catastrophic flight. Decker launches an investigation that carries him down a path of tragic history, dangerous secrets, and deadly lies—and leads him to the corpse of a three-decades-missing murder victim. And as the jagged pieces slowly fall into place, a frightening picture begins to form: a mind-searing portrait of unimaginable evil that will challenge Decker's and Rina's own beliefs about guilt and innocence and justice.

The other new book on the list is The Careful Use of Compliments, the 4th entry in the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. In addition to being the nosiest and most sympathetic philosopher you are likely to meet, Isabel is now a mother. Charlies, her newborn son, presents her with a myriad wonders of a new life, and doting father Jamie presents her with an intriguing proposal: marriage. In the midst of all this, she receives a disturbing letter announcing that she has been ousted as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. None of these things, however, in any way diminishes Isabel's curiosity. And when she attends an art auction, she finds an irresistible puzzle: two paintings attributed to a now-deceased artist appear on the market at the same time, and both of them exhibit some unusual characteristics. Are these paintings forgeries? This proves to be sufficient fodder for Isabel's inquisitiveness. So she begins an investigation ... and soon finds herself diverging from her philosophical musings about fatherhood onto a path that leads her into the mysteries of the art world and the soul of an artist.

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