The Hidden Staircase Mystery Books recently updated its list of July 2011 hardcover mysteries as well as shelved new July paperbacks on The Mystery Bookshelf.
In this series of monthly posts, which we call Firsts on the 1st, we're introducing readers to new series characters who will make their mysterious American debut during July. (Purchase options are indicated by icons under the cover image.)
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Title: Chihuahua of the Baskervilles
Author: Esri Allbritten
Series Characters: "Tripping Magazine"
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the charactera: The eccentric staff of Tripping Magazine are featured in this series of paranormal mysteries.
Her first case: The magazine staff go to Manitou Springs, Colorado, to investigate a ghostly Chihuahua spotted by the rich founder of a clothing catalog for small dogs. Is the glowing apparition really the deceased namesake of Petey’s Closet, "Where Dapper Dogs Shop"? Or is someone trying to teach a dead dog new tricks?
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Title: A Question of Despair
Author: Maureen Carter
Series Character: Sarah Quinn
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Sarah Quinn is a Detective Inspector in Birmingham (England).
Her first case: When a baby is snatched from outside a Birmingham newsagent, Quinn and feisty TV reporter Caroline King clash head-on in the desperate search to find her. Quinn’s cool investigative methods contrast with those of the fiery King, who’ll stop at nothing in pursuit of a good story. But as the investigation stonewalls, it soon becomes clear that the two enemies will have to work together if the police are to have any chance of success ...
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Title: Killed at the Whim of a Hat
Author: Colin Cotterill
Series Character: Jimm Juree
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Jimm Juree is a crime reporter in rural Thailand.
Her first case: Jimm was a crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Daily Mail with a somewhat eccentric family — a mother who might be drifting mentally; a grandfather — a retired cop — who rarely talks; a younger brother obsessed with body-building, and a transgendered, former beauty pageant queen, former older brother. When Jimm is forced to follow her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she's convinced her career — maybe her life — is over. So when a van containing the skeletal remains of two hippies, one of them wearing a hat, is inexplicably unearthed in a local farmer's field, Jimm is thrilled. Shortly thereafter an abbot at a local Buddhist temple is viciously murdered, with the temple's monk and nun the only suspects.
Suddenly Jimm's new life becomes somewhat more promising — and a lot more deadly. And if Jimm is to make the most of this opportunity, and unravel the mysteries that underlie these inexplicable events, it will take luck, perseverance, and the help of her entire family.
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Title: Misterioso
Author: Arne Dahl
Series Character: Paul Hjelm
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Paul Hjelm is a police officer in suburban Stockholm (Sweden).
His first case: After successfully — but bloodily — dismantling a complicated hostage situation at a bank in the suburbs of Stockholm, Hjelm is faced with the requisite investigation by Internal Affairs. It is a potentially career-ending inquiry, but he is plucked out of it by the National Criminal Police commissioner, who drops him into an elite task force of officers assembled from across the country to find an elusive killer with a sophisticated modus operandi and even more sophisticated tastes.
Targeting Sweden’s high-profile business leaders, the killer breaks into their homes at night, waits for his victims, places two bullets in their heads with deadly precision, and removes the bullets from the walls — a ritual enacted to a rare bootleg recording of Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic "Misterioso."
As Hjelm, his young, doggedly energetic partner, Jorge Chavez, and the rest of the team follow one lead after another in their pursuit—navigating the murky underworlds of the Russian Mafia and the secretive members-only society of Sweden’s wealthiest denizens — they must also delve into one of the country’s most persistent ills: a deep-rooted xenophobia that affects both the police and the perpetrator in a small nation that is becoming rapidly internationalized.
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Title: Pacific Heights
Author: Paul Harper
Series Character: Marten Fane
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Marten Fane is a former intelligence officer living in San Francisco (California).
His first case: A couple meets in a seedy hotel room for an illicit affair, the rules of which are simple: no names, no personal details, the specifics of their lives off-limits. It's all very exciting to Lore Cha — the wife of a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur — who thinks their forbidden meetings and taboo sexual encounters are exactly the escape she's been looking for: every single detail is as she imagined. But that's the problem. Phillip Krey anticipates every thought before she has it. He plays out her untold fantasies down to the last detail. His insights are beyond intuitive; they're invasive, even frightening. It's as if he has access into her mind. Across town, Elise Currin, wife to one of San Francisco's most powerful businessmen, is also seeing Krey, and is slowly being driven insane by his ability to tap in to her most private desires. When it's revealed that these women are also seeing the same therapist, a chilling scenario unfolds, and the quiet, plotting detective Marten Fane is called in.
Slowly Fane uncovers a plot that goes beyond Krey to reveal a powerful private sector, secret government involvement, and one of the most elaborate and monstrous psychological experiments imaginable: a traceless form of murder.
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Title: Deed to Death
Author: D. B. Henson
Series Character: Toni Matthews
Format: Trade Paperback
What we know about the character: Toni Matthews is a real estate agent in Nashville (Tennessee).
Her first case: At 29, Toni is on the cusp of having it all — a successful career as one of the top real estate agents in Nashville, great friends, and the partner and family she’d always longed for in her fiancé, architect Scott Chadwick.
But just days before their planned nuptials, Scott plummets to his death at one of his construction sites and Toni is forced to bury her fiancé on their wedding day. Now living all alone in their new, custom-made dream house, dealing with her loss becomes even harder when the police rule his death a suicide. Yet Toni refuses to believe that it could be anything other than a tragic accident.
When she learns that Scott’s estranged brother, Brian, is contesting the will, threatening to take away her home, Toni starts to suspect that it may not have been a mere accident but something more sinister. Without the cooperation of the police, and in spite of her friends’ growing concern that she’s in denial and not dealing with her grief, Toni begins investigating on her own. As she crisscrosses Nashville on a mission to prove to herself and the world that Scott wouldn’t try to escape this life, Toni can’t shake the sinking feeling that something is off, that she’s being followed — and that her search for truth may have deadly consequences.
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Title: The Square Root of Murder
Author: Ada Madison
Series Character: Sophie Knowles
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Dr. Sophie Knowles teaches math at Henley College in Massachusetts.
Her first case: When a colleague turns up dead, it's up to her to find the killer before someone else gets subtracted.
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Title: Books Can Be Deceiving
Author: Jenn McKinlay
Series Character: Lindsey Norris, Library Lover's
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Lindsey Norris is the director of the Public Library in Briar Creek, a quaint coastal town in Connecticut.
Her first case: Lindsey is getting into her groove when a New York editor visits town, creating quite a buzz. Lindsey's friend Beth wants to sell the editor her children's book, but Beth's boyfriend, a famous author, gets in the way. When they go to confront him, he's found murdered — and Beth is the prime suspect. Lindsey has to act fast before they throw the book at the wrong person.
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Title: Original Sin
Author: Beth McMullen
Series Character: Sally Sin
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Lucy Hamilton is a stay-at-home San Francisco mom … and she is also a spy code-named "Sally Sin".
Her first case: After falling in love and making a quick exit from her nine-year career in the USAWMD (United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction), Sally does her best to become Lucy Hamilton. No one, not even her adoring husband Will, knows about her secret agent escapades — chasing no-good masterminds through perilous jungles, escaping evil assassins, and playing dangerous games of cat and mouse with her old nemesis, Ian Blackford, a notorious and dashing illegal arms dealer.
In her new life as Lucy Hamilton, she squeezes inside forts crafted from couch cushions by her three-year-old son Theo, makes organic applesauce, and frequents the zoo. But sometimes her well-honed spy reflexes refuse to lay low. She can't help breaking into her own house to check on the babysitter or stop herself from tossing the yoga instructor who gets on her nerves. And when Ian Blackford, who is supposed to be dead, once again starts causing trouble for the USAWMD, the agency becomes desperate to get Sally back on the job.
How can Sally or Lucy or whatever her name is save the planet while at the same time keeping her own family's world from spinning out of control?
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Title: A Killing in Antiques
Author: Mary Moody
Series Character: Lucy St. Elmo, Antiques
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Lucy St. Elmo is an antiques dealer in central Massachusetts.
Her first case: Treasure hunting is not for the faint of heart. Luckily, Lucy has more than enough heart. What she needs to improve are her tracking skills — or else the wrong man could be convince of a one-of-a-kind murder.
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Title: Wahoo Rhapsody
Author: Shaun Morey
Series Character: Atticus Fish
Format: Trade Paperback
What we know about the character: Atticus Fish is an ex-pat American lawyer in Baja California.
His first case: Take one sea-loving captain, a drug-smuggling first mate, and a novice deckhand with a secret, and you have the motley crew of the Wahoo Rhapsody, a ramshackle fishing charter plying the Pacific’s waters off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. Captain Winston Weber makes an honest, if lean, living running fishing charters between Mexico and California, with no inkling of the fact that his first mate, Weevil Ott, is smuggling marijuana inside the yellowfin tuna stacked in the boat’s hold. But when Weevil decides to skim a small fortune for himself, goons under orders from the mysterious drug lord known only as "La Cucaracha" descend upon the Wahoo Rhapsody.
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Title: A Spark of Death
Author: Bernadette Pajer
Series Character: Benjamin Bradshaw
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Benjamin Bradshaw is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington at the beginning of the twentieth century.
His first case: Seattle in 1901 is a bustling blend of frontier attitude and cosmopolitan swagger. The Snoqualmie Falls Power Plant lights the city, but to most Seattleites, electricity is new-fangled and dangerous. The public wants a culprit — they want Bradshaw behind bars.
The killer wants Bradshaw dead.
His life and liberty threatened, Bradshaw discovers the thrill of investigation as he's thrust deeper into the hunt.Questions abound. How had the Electric Machine's Tesla Coil delivered a fatal shock? Was the murder personal — or connected to President McKinley's planned visit? Were students involved, or in danger? And why had Bradshaw's best friend, Henry, fled to Alaska the day of the murder?
When Henry's niece Missouri appears on Bradshaw's porch in need of a home, her unorthodox views and femininity confuse and intrigue him as he struggles to protect his own haunting secret. Danger and death lurk everywhere — disguised as accidents. Has Bradshaw come alive again only to lose all he holds dear? Before it's too late, will he discover the circuit path that led to a spark of death?
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Title: The Return of Captain John Emmett
Author: Elizabeth Speller
Series Character: Laurence Bartram
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Laurence Bartram is a former infantry officer in post-World War I England.
His first case: London, 1920. In the aftermath of the Great War and a devastating family tragedy, Laurence has turned his back on the world. But with a well-timed letter, an old flame manages to draw him back in. Mary Emmett’s brother John — like Laurence, an officer during the war — has apparently killed himself while in the care of a remote veterans’ hospital, and Mary needs to know why.
Aided by his friend Charles — a dauntless gentleman with detective skills cadged from mystery novels — Laurence begins asking difficult questions. What connects a group of war poets, a bitter feud within Emmett’s regiment, and a hidden love affair? Was Emmett’s death really a suicide, or the missing piece in a puzzling series of murders? As veterans tied to Emmett continue to turn up dead, and Laurence is forced to face the darkest corners of his own war experiences, his own survival may depend on uncovering the truth.
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Title: Good to the Last Kiss
Author: Ronald Tierney
Series Character: Vincent Gratelli
Format: Hardcover
What we know about the character: Vincent Gratelli is a San Francisco police inspector.
His first case: Gratelli is charged with finding the killer of young women – all murdered in the same way, all left with an intimate mark. The most recent victim was beaten and raped in her weekend cabin. There appears to be only one difference — she is still alive. Which leaves Gratelli with two questions: how can these murders be stopped ... and how does the killer feel about unfinished business?
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Title: A Taste of the Nightlife
Author: Sarah Zettel
Series Character: Charlotte Caine
Format: Mass Market Paperback
What we know about the character: Charlotte Caine is a "Vampire Chef" … but not because she is a vampire, she just cooks for them in New York City.
Her first case: Charlotte's restaurant, Nightlife, is poised to take the top slot in the world of "haute noir" cuisine. But when a drunk customer causes a scene, a glowing review from the city's top food critic doesn't seem likely — especially when that customer winds up dead on Nightlife's doorstep. Now, with her brother under suspicion for the murder, Charlotte has to re-open her restaurant and clear her brother's name — before they both become dinner.
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For a list of more hardcover mysteries scheduled for publication during July, please visit our New Mysteries home page. If you're interested in new paperbacks, visit The Mystery Bookshelf, where you can discover a library of new mysteries, also updated with July 2011 releases. See also our regularly updated eBook site for new mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers, MysterEbooks.com.
Please also visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.
