The Third Rail, by Michael Harvey (hardcover, $24.95)

It's unusual for an author to share the same name as his character, but Michael Kelly, private investigator and former Chicago cop, is the compelling creation of author Michael Harvey.

I loved the first book in the series, the sad and surprising The Chicago Way. The second book, The Fifth Floor, I thought was less gripping, the center of the story a "huh?" to us non-Chicagoans, but I liked it. The Third Rail is both a page-turner and another history lesson of Chicago. There are quite a few Chicago writers (Sean Chercover, Marcus Sakey, Charlie Newton, Sara Paretsky) and they strive to incorporate the essence of their city in their stories. (Another favorite, Jim Butcher, doesn't live in Chicago, but the city is an essential ingredient in his Dresden books.)

In an adrenalin-popping start, a man goes up to a woman who is waiting for the "L," the elevated railway thousands of Chicago commuters use, and shoots her dead. Then a sniper shoots a commuter on another L train. Michael Kelly witnesses the first shooting and is soon involved in the second. It becomes obvious that Michael Kelly has something to do with what is motivating the shooter or shooters. But what? It is a convoluted path that leads to the convoluted and fantastic ending – maybe a little too fantastic, eh? – but the journey is fascinating. Like Michael Connelly, Michael Harvey is a great storyteller. Connelly's Scarecrow was very far-fetched, as is The Third Rail, but that's okay, I say, because I found myself nodding along with every strange turn the story took. Lethal lightbulbs? Sure. Decades-old grudges? Sure. Catholic church misdeeds? Absolutely.

What I loved about the first book was the very human story at the heart of The Chicago Way. There is a very human story about Kelly's father at the base of this work as well, but it is buried under special effects. Reader, when you learn what it is, pause and give it its due before heading back into the fray.

Sink Trap, by Christy Evans ($6.99)

Local girl makes good! Oregon coast author Christy Evans has a new series, which starts off with Sink Trap. Georgiana Neverall has unwillingly traded a high-flying dot-com life in Silicon Valley for a life as a plumber's apprentice back in her small hometown of Pine Ridge, Oregon. While Evans only hints at Georgiana's dot-com background and the mysterious scandal that drove her back to Oregon in this book, there's still plenty of story left.

Lots of people have Georgiana's back, whether she wants their help or not. Her boss, Barry or "Bear," is a genuine good guy and willing to give a girl a break in a man's business. His wife, Paula, is Pine Ridge's librarian and a good storyteller. Wade, her high school sweetheart, is trying to re-establish a romantic relationship with her. Sue, her best friend, is a dog groomer. (Georgiana's interaction with her dogs is a nice, humorous sidelight.) And Sandra is her mother and oil to Georgiana's water. Sandra has gone from a homebody doctor's wife to a glamorous real estate agent.

Besides being about the mystery Georgiana must solve – that of a missing retired librarian – Sink Trap is a story of Georgiana's personal quest to redefine herself, and that is the real charm of this book. As attractive as it is to read about a young woman enthusiastically eating pizza, hamburgers, fondue, and other heart-stopping fare, so I can live vicariously through her, the addition of plumbing details is the unexpectedly compelling touch. (To those of us who are fans of Mike Holmes on HGTV, this is bread and butter talk.)

No sex. No swearing. Just good old-fashioned plumbing common sense.

Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves ($13.95) (c2006)

Reading Raven Black is like taking a ride in a car that's speeding up and hitting hairpin turns at the end before it comes to a 180-degree spinning halt.

British author Ann Cleeves has been writing for a long time. American audiences first met her through her George and Molly Palmer-Jones, bird-watching mystery series. Since then, Cleeves has journeyed into darker waters with tougher themes and main characters. We in the U.S. have not seen most of her books, but St. Martin's Press has brought her latest endeavor to our shores.

Jimmy Perez is a police inspector in a very moody and atmospheric version of the Shetland Islands. Although Cleeves has released four books in this series, the U.S. has only seen three of them. Raven Black is the first book, and it won the 2006 Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, a prestigious British award for crime fiction.

Jimmy has been called in to solve the murder of a teenage girl found strangled in the woods. The villagers are convinced that Magnus Tait, a mentally impaired old man who lives nearby, is responsible. Years ago he was arrested for the murder of a young girl but got off because no conclusive evidence could be found. Jimmy and Roy Taylor, the lead investigator of an off-island contingent of policemen, are reluctant to just assume Magnus is guilty, especially given the lack of conclusive evidence pointing in his direction, and begin to interview the girl's family, friends, and neighbors.

As the ravens relentlessly circle a carcass, so do the villagers circle tighter and tighter around Magnus, forcing Jimmy and Roy to press themselves harder to either condemn or acquit him. Then more information teasingly surfaces about what Catherine, the victim, had been doing prior to her death. And there may also be a connection to the death of the young girl years ago. Some of that points towards Magnus, but there are other suspects and suspicious circumstances a-plenty, and Cleeves does a great job presenting a small community of eccentric characters in crisis.

False Mermaid, by Erin Hart (hardcover, $26)

Mermaids, other Irish folklore, and American crime meet in this long-awaited follow-up to Lake of Sorrows and Haunted Ground. Pathologist Nora Gavin has spent a few years in Ireland examining bodies buried and preserved in Ireland's peat. Now the time has come for her to return home to Minnesota to examine the murder of her sister, Triona.

Nora left St. Paul in frustration after not being able to prove that her sister's husband, Peter, killed Triona. What she feels in her soul cannot be proven in a court of law. She returns also to Frank Cordova, the lead police investigator for the crime. Frank hopes she wants to continue the relationship with him that she abandoned when she fled to Ireland, but Nora's heart lies with Cormac, an archaeologist and musician she met in Ireland. What Nora wants from Frank is to continue to track Triona's final days in the hope that new evidence can be uncovered. Time is running out because Peter is slated to marry Miranda, the sister of another of Nora's old boyfriends. Nora fears that Miranda will share Triona's fate. Complicating the mix is Elizabeth, Triona and Peter's daughter. She is eleven now and her future is looking grim. Nora is desperate to help her as well.

What Erin Hart also does is to call forth the mystery of nature. In this case the mystery may lie beyond the ken of human science. Throughout the book, Hart refers to the selkie mythology: a seal who is forced to live as a human until she can break the spell of the man who binds her. Could that old tale be true, and what bearing does it have on Triona's life or death? In poetic fashion, Hart weaves Irish myth and music with the grim practicalities of tracking down a cold-blooded killer. Nora lays her heart open to save Elizabeth and honor Triona's memory.

In Michael Connelly's best book, The Concrete Blonde, police detective Harry Bosch takes on the decades old case of who murdered his mother. I admire how Connelly built up to this story with hints about Harry's troubled past in prior books. Then, wham! – The Concrete Blonde. In a similar fashion, Hart's prior books built up to this denouement of Nora's sister's story. Other than Nora's unnecessary, cinematic forays into spooky places alone (sheesh, without telling anyone, even), she is canny and intuitive in her search for clues. This was a very satisfactory ending to Nora's torment. I also enjoyed Hart's well-developed peripheral characters and the red herrings thrown the reader's way.