The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, by Nancy Springer ($6.99) (c2008)

Enola Holmes, much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, is as much fun in this her fourth adventure as she was in her first, The Case of the Missing Marquess.

It has just been a few months since 14-year-old Enola ran away from home, away from brothers intent on raising her to be a lady, wedded to some suitable gentleman when the time is right. She has established herself as the secretary to Dr. Ragostin, a private investigator, only "Dr. Ragostin" is a figment of Enola's imagination. She is single-handedly solving mysteries and managing to support herself. Now if Enola could only solve the biggest mystery of all: What happened to her mother? The reason Enola was left in the care of her brothers is that her mother suddenly disappeared, apparently traveling with a caravan of gypsies, looking for or hiding from goodness-knows-what.

London is a big city, but Enola is constantly in danger of being spotted by one or another of her brothers. In her latest case, she accidentally crosses paths with both of them, potentially hobbling her as she tries to rescue -- again -- Lady Cecily Alistair, the damsel-in-distress of the second Enola Holmes adventure, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady. In a modern public lavatory, Enola sees Cecily escorted by a pair of formidable dowagers. Cecily seems to be more a prisoner than a young woman being escorted to pick out her trousseau, but that is what the dowagers are talking about -- Cecily's trousseau. Using a flimsy pink fan, Cecily uses the secret fan signal system once popular among cultured young women to silently pass messages among themselves in public. "Rescue me," she signals before she disappears, trundled off by her captors.

The chase is on.

These books are written for children, but there are plenty of adult fans, too. I find them intelligently written, entertaining, and certainly complimentary of and complementary to the Sherlock Holmes myth. The next up, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, is due out soon in hardcover.

Finding Nouf, by Zoe Ferraris (c2008) ($13.95)

Based on her experience living with Saudi-Palestinian Bedouins, American Zoe Ferraris tries to give us an inside look at one aspect of the complicated contemporary Muslim society in Saudi Arabia. There were too many qualifications in that last sentence. That's because Saudi Arabia, on the face of it, is one of the Middle East countries cordial to the United States and it's one of the most "western" in its appearance. Lest we forget, however, it is predominantly conservative Muslim. The vast majority of Saudi Arabian women appear in public in burkas, the head to toe shroud that masks their identity and femininity. It is difficult for a woman to hold power or affect the political structure, but there are exceptions. This is the complicated, conflicting structure that provides the background Ferraris uses for her tale of murder and propriety.

On the verge of marrying a suitable man chosen by her wealthy family, young Nouf disappears and is later found in the desert, drowned. One of the distraught members of her large, influential family asks Nayir ash-Sharqi, a desert guide who has worked for the family on several occasions, to first find her in the desert and then to find the murderer once her body is found. Nayir is a conservative Muslim who yearns to be married but finds it difficult to find a wife because he is a low-status (no one to broker his marriage) pious (can't look at women) Muslim. This seems like a fairly interesting conflict, but within the course of the book Nayir slips from a conservative point of view to a more liberal one without a satisfying point of liberation, in my opinion.

Katya is the fiancée of one of the family's sons. She is a modern woman because she has a job and is willing to be seen in certain settings without her veil. She risks being socially ostracized and losing her job to help find the killer. Her point of view is much more interesting. I would have enjoyed seeing more of her rather than Nayir, but the point of Ferraris' story is that Katya was very limited in what she could do.

The book was slow moving in parts, but it was mostly intriguing. It's good that I'm still thinking about the book, but it's probably not good that I found the resolution a little trite. I thought there could have been more depth and a grander motivation. I wanted it to be more about the Saudi Arabian culture and less about self-serving egotism, something we can get in the United States in abundance.

U Is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton ($7.99)

It's been awhile since I've read one of the alphabet books. After I thought Kinsey Millhone wussed out at the end of one of the books, I grew uninterested in her goings on. I managed to stay distant through a few more of the letters, but the premise of this book sounded so intriguing that I decided to renew my acquaintance with Santa Teresa's most famous P.I. This is the thing: Nobody does it better than Sue Grafton. She still does one of the best jobs opening and closing a book, setting up the scene, reintroducing us over and over to Kinsey, and putting us in a place and time.

The place is the fictional town of Santa Teresa and the time is 1988. A young man asks Kinsey to investigate a memory. He says that as a six-year-old he saw two men bury a bag in the woods next to a middle class subdivision. As an adult he realized that it was right around the time of the kidnapping and disappearance of a young girl in 1967. It was a sensation at the time, and over the years people assumed the young girl was dead, although her body was never found. (To accommodate all the reader needs to know, part of the book is first-person Kinsey and the rest is a third-person narrative that follows several people who lived in the area.) So Sutton, the grown-up little boy, is convinced that what the men were burying was the little girl, and he wants Kinsey to find the spot. Based on Sutton's scant memories, Kinsey works the clues step by elusive step.

Instead of telling you what Kinsey and Sutton find -- because if you read this book, you have every right to be as surprised as I was by the revelations -- let me just say that this was a very satisfying book. I learned what a wuss I was for having given up on Sue Grafton. This is why she is a good writer: She doesn't beat her readers over their heads with the clues. She lets the pieces fall in place for them, too. At the end, she doesn't say that this plus that plus this other thing equals the aha! moment. I was impressed by how she slowly and carefully unfolded the story, and how she created her moments of tension and sadness seemingly without effort.

Another part of the book deals with Kinsey's newfound family. Her wealthy grandmother and other relations have been trying to draw Kinsey into the family fold. After years of neglect by this family, she isn't buying into any warm, fuzzy feelings for them. Once again, Grafton's tremendous strength as a writer is on display with this side story. Real people, real feelings -- really, really well done.

I have awarded this book an MBTB star.

The Dark Vineyard, by Martin Walker (hardcover, $23.95)

Now I, too, would like to run away to wine country in Périgord, France. What more could you want than foie gras, truffles, and the wines of the region, bergerac and monbazillac? And a little non-threatening mystery, perhaps.

This is the follow-up to Martin Walker's first book, Bruno, Chief of Police. (I love a title that plainly says it all.) Bruno Courrèges is in fact the chief of police of the little town of Saint-Denis. It is populated by good souls, some of whom are eccentric, all of whom seem to enjoy a good glass of un vin rouge simple.

Walker is a writer of mostly books and articles about global business concerns and other non-fiction topics. It is obvious, however, from reading The Dark Vineyard that his knowledge of this region of France runs deep enough to give his book an authentic-sounding twang. His business background gives the book its main storyline.

A mega-wine company from the U.S. is trying to buy large tracts of land in Saint-Denis to produce more of its uniform corporate wine. This would bring more jobs and money to the region, so Bruno and the mayor play host to the son of the current CEO. In the meantime, an arsonist sets fire to a field where experimental crops are being grown. It turns out the crops were genetically modified grape vines. Much, much, much later in the book, a dead body is discovered in a vat of wine. Are all or any of these things related? Of course they are. Walker does a credible job setting up the light mystery, but before the bad person(s) is discovered, every character is innocent and likable until proven guilty.

What a salad of characters Walker tosses at us: Albert, Cpt. Duros, Jules, Ahmed, Fabien, Gérard, Philippe, Stéphane, Dominique, the Baron, Pamela, Claire, J.J., Isabelle, Alphonse, Fauquet, Gustave, Hubert, Cresseil, Nathalie, Baptiste, M. d'Alambert, Hector, Jacqueline, Max, Rollo, Xavier, and on and on. I actually had to keep notes because there were so many names, and who knew which ones would prove to be important later. Then, too, I had not read the first book, which probably introduced many of the characters. Most authors know to reintroduce, however quickly, standing characters. Walker does it for some of the people but not all. It sometimes isn't until pages or chapters later that a character's place in Saint-Denis is explained. I strongly suggest you, too, take notes. (Note: I was reading an "ARC," an advanced reading copy. Sometimes editing corrects deficits, so perhaps the final version is a little clearer. If so, I apologize. But still, take notes.)

Bruno is quite likable. (But, as previously said, aren't they all?) I tremendously enjoyed the description of the food and wine of the region. I truly want to believe the French in Périgord are as good-hearted and community-minded as they are in Walker's book. This book is ... likable.