Summer is in full swing, which often means long flights with the inherent delays that air travel entails before arriving at a beachfront hotel or resort. No matter: reading a good murder mystery will make the journey more bearable and keep you entertained after you check in at your destination. This is also true if you plan to stay local and spend sunny afternoons at Dolores Park.
For those who don't like hot weather, Rhys Bowen's The Twelve Clues of Christmas (Berkeley Crime, $24.95), her latest Royal Spyness mystery featuring Lady Georgiana Rannuch, will offer a bracing chill. Georgie, daughter of a duke and 35th in line to the English throne occupied by King George V and Queen Mary, is, as usual, broke. A poor relation, she seems doomed to spend the holidays in the freezing discomfort of her ancestral Scottish castle. Then she unexpectedly gets a job in an idyllic English village, helping Lady Hawse-Gorzley with a huge holiday house-party for paying guests. Also at the village are Georgie's oft-wed mother Claire Daniels, a glamorous stage star, and Noel Coward, writing a new play for her. At Georgie's insistence, Claire, who has erased all traces of her background, is joined by her father, a retired cockney cop, and his companion, Mrs. Huggins, who will cook for her and Coward. Not long after Georgie arrives at the village, dead bodies are found in unusual circumstances. Soon enough, the smolderingly sexy Irish peer Darcy O'Mara, who leads a secret life, arrives to help Georgie solve the yuletide crimes �" and arouse her passions. Another witty, entertaining entry in the series.
The weather in Provence is milder than in Britain, but murder still occurs. In M.L. Longworth's Death in the Vines (Penguin, $15), Oliver Bonnard is stunned when a priceless collection of rare vintages is stolen from his wine cellar. Then the formidable Madame Pauline D'Arras, who has been behaving oddly, is found dead. Her husband Gilles calls upon Inspector Bonnet and Judge Verlaque to come to Aix-en-Provence to investigate. This splendid sequel to Death at the Chateau Bremont has appealing and resourceful sleuths, a fine plot, a superb sense of place, and a terrific sense of Gallic bravura.
The French influence is still felt in post-Katrina New Orleans, the setting for Joy Castro's latest Nola Cespedes mystery, Nearer Home (St. Martin's, $25.99). While jogging, Nola, a crime reporter for the Big Easy's Times-Picayune Express, finds the dead body of Dr. Judith Taffner, her former journalism instructor at Tulane. Then another corpse turns up during the city's popular Jazz Festival. Corruption is rampant among the police force and local politicians, so Nola, not trusting the authorities, investigates on her own. This exceptionally atmospheric story features a tough, memorable heroine, christened Nola by her single Cuban mother so she would have a sense of roots.
The state of Maine was probably named for a French province, and it's the setting for award-winning author Eleanor Kuhns' historical novel Death of a Dyer (Minotaur Books, $24.99). In the last decade of the 18th century, with political and social revolutions still reverberating on both sides of the Atlantic, itinerant weaver Rees, a widower, is happily back home, living with his teenage son David and housekeeper Lydia. He then learns that an old childhood friend, Nate Bowditch, has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. Rees is asked to investigate and cannot refuse. Is Nate's chilly widow, his missing son, or a timid serving girl guilty of homicide? Or are less obvious people responsible? Kuhns' characters are engaging, and she expertly recreates the world of the Shakers, today best-known for their simple furniture.
Nothing could be more different from Shaker simplicity than modern-day Venice, with its baroque facades, endangered piazzas and canals, hordes of tourists, noble families, and rampant corruption. No one understands this world better than Donna Leon, and her latest Inspector Guido Brunetti mystery, The Golden Egg (Atlantic Monthly Press, $26), is among the most fascinating in her series. Brunetti's handsome, stylish, pompous boss, Vice-Questore Patta, asks Brunetti to look into a minor affair that will earn him a political favor. Brunetti's wife Paola, daughter of a count, a socialist, and a college professor teaching reluctant students the virtues of Henry James, wants him to check into the odd death of an employee at their dry cleaners. While many people knew the man, officially he never existed. No birth certificate, passport, credit card, identification �" nothing to prove he ever lived. The dead man's mother won't talk to the police. As usual, once Brunetti starts an investigation, it is difficult to predict where it will end. He may clash with the aristocratic and still powerful Lembos family. Brunetti is a sympathetic, engaging sleuth. Leon's unequalled recreation of Venice captures its stunning beauty and shocking decadence.