My Soul to Take, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir ($13.99) (c 2009)

Thóra Gundmundsdóttir is an attorney, single mother, and Reykjavík, Iceland's version of Kinsey Millhone. Unlike the other Scandinavian mysteries that have erupted into the American market in the years since "The Girl Who" series, Sigurdardóttir's series has a sense of humor. For the most part, when she's not dodging her kids or brushing them off on her sometime boyfriend, Matthew Reich, Thóra is a good mother. When she's not dodging or brushing off Bella, her awful secretary, instead of facing her down, Thóra is a good attorney.

It is one of Thóra's clients, Jónas, the owner of a spa located in a foggy, desolate, mystical area on the coast, who needs her help when he is involved in the murder of Birna, his part-time paramour and  architect. As in "Last Rituals," the first book in the series, there are Icelandic myths and potential paranormal activities laced throughout the story.

In order to help Jónas, Thóra breaks into the victim's room, steals a diary, barges into homes, verbally attacks suspects and witnesses, lies, and generally engages in pretty sketchy unlawyer-like behavior. Yet, I find the character of Thóra strangely compelling and attractive.

I found some parts of the story a little muddled but wasn't sufficiently disturbed to stop reading. In general, I liked the hunt for clues and the ultimate solution, once the red herrings were sloughed off.

It's Thóra's personal story that adds considerably to the series. The side story of Thóra's 16-year-old son and his pregnant girlfriend was human, funny, and sad. Her ex-husband is a dunderheaded lummox. It's her battles to remain upright when everything is tilting against her that should put readers on her side.

(Readers who do not like stories of children in danger should give this a pass, as it begins with a heart-wrenching story of a little girl in jeopardy.)

Suspect, by Robert Crais (hardcover, $27.95)

I have to admit to being a little misty-eyed at the end of this book. "Suspect" was a little sappy, but every good dog story is a little.

What happens when an LAPD officer and a Marine-trained dog both suffer from PTSD? They are joined in partnership at the LAPD K-9 unit. It's a convoluted story that brings Scott James and Maggie together to help each other heal (and heel).

Scott was shot when he and his patrol partner were inadvertent witnesses to a violent late-night attack at a quiet intersection in LA. A truck T-boned a Bentley. Another car screeched up to the accident. Five men got out and began shooting the occupants of the Bentley. Scott and his partner were collateral damage. Scott was the only one to walk away. In the nine months since the incident, none of the killers has been identified.

Maggie's Marine partner died while hunting for explosives in Afghanistan. So her superb training won't go to waste, she is eventually adopted by the K-9 unit. Against his better judgment, the captain assigns Maggie to Scott, who has been foisted on his department. No one quite knows what to do with the emotionally and physically disabled hero who refuses to retire quietly. Maggie startles at loud noises and is on the verge of washing out of the service herself.

While Scott is bonding and training with Maggie, the new detective assigned to his case contacts him and allows Scott to read his file materials. Scott finds an evidence bag that has been misfiled. Even though the artifact in the bag has been declared unimportant to the case, luck and instinct makes Scott take a second look at it. From that stepping stone, Scott surges forward to find new evidence of who the shooters were. Using Maggie's extraordinary skills and olfactory talents, and the recent acquaintance of detective Joyce Cowly, Scott finds that the answers are more complicated and closer to home than he had imagined.

We've come to know and appreciate the quirky, independent-minded, and smart-alecky Elvis Cole, Crais' usual protagonist, that Scott James is rather flat by comparison. The storytelling, however, is Crais' usual blend of good pacing and interesting details, with a tear-jerker story of man's best friend thrown in.

Dying in the Wool, by Frances Brody ($14.99)

This is a surprisingly tart book about post-WWI England, with a peek into the world of wool textile mills of the time. Despite the bucolic picture on the book cover, the Yorkshire area depicted in the book is more "Hound of the Baskervilles" than Agatha Christie. There's a sense of desolation and dark, eddying village connections, covered by the miasma thrown up by a thundering mill.

In many ways this new series is like the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Kate Shackleton, like Maisie, has lost the man she loved in the war. Each becomes a private investigator. Each knows the upstairs-downstairs elements of a stratified society. Frances Brody's Kate is less angelic than Winspear's Maisie. Kate seems more human and a little more bumbling, sometimes blurting out a discovery to the discomfort of her listeners. Each author creates a whole, believable post-war England very well. 

Kate is more queen than commoner. Her father is a police officer, her mother a Lady, with a capital "L." Kate's late husband -- for whom Kate, in vague denial, still searches -- was a surgeon. Her housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden, is Kate's Mrs. Hudson, if Mrs. Hudson had a manure pile in the back yard. Her friends are upper crust, and her new assistant, the redoubtable Sykes, is working class. In order to solve the central mystery, Kate interviews upper and lower classes and appears comfortable talking with both.

A friend from her war days with the VAD -- volunteers who helped as nurses and medical staff -- has asked for help locating her father, who has been missing, presumed dead, for many years. Tabitha Braithwaite is soon to be married and she wants her father to walk her down the aisle. That is a big problem, since Joshua Braithwaite ran away from a psychiatric hospital in which he was confined after the police arrested him for attempting suicide and never seen again.

Kate is less scientific in her investigation than Maisie would be, but she efficiently manages to uncover all sorts of information many people would prefer be kept hidden.

This was an enjoyable read -- although one of the characters, the psychiatrist, still puzzles me a bit. Brody did a great job stepping back into the past without overemphasizing and banging on about what was different about that time from the present. She gives us a tour of a textile mill of the time, and it would be difficult to imagine a less wholesome work place, unless it were a coal mine or munitions factory.

I liked Kate and wish her well in her next adventure.

P.S. When various characters sit on a "buffet," they are not sitting on a variety of food dishes. It's northern England slang for a low stool.

V Is for Vengeance, by Sue Grafton ($7.99) (c2011)

Do I need my temperature taken, my obsession level checked, my craving for neatness -- in other people's lives -- curbed? Why is the most satisfying part of a Sue Grafton novel seeing Kinsey Millhone tidy her house and office, shuffle her index cards, meticulously organize her stakeout kit (including peanut butter and pickle sandwiches)? It isn't that I didn't like the storyline about shoplifters, a criminal gang, a couple of murders, love among the rich and morally wacky, and coyote scat. I enjoyed the story and Grafton's re-creation of the 1980s, the time bubble in which Kinsey is preserved. (At one point, Kinsey's push-button desk phone breaks, so she pulls out a rotary dial phone from her office cupboard and remarks on how ancient it seems.)

Grafton's early books were slender and to-the-point. "B Is for Burglar," for example, was about 200 paperback pages long; "V" is about 400. Kinsey's great first-person narration appears in only about two-thirds of the book. The other third was third-person, following the lives of Dante, a Mafia-type gangster, and Nora, a Beverly Hills housewife-type. I couldn't drum up the requisite sympathy for or interest in their characters, people caught in unsustainable lifestyles. Kinsey, however, is a different story. I LOVE Kinsey.

Forever and a day I will enjoy watching Kinsey push around unidentifiable glop at Rosie's restaurant and tootle around Santa Theresa, a thinly disguised Santa Barbara. I can smell landlord Henry's baking through the pages. (Although he is largely absent in "V.") Who needs a mystery?

"V" was fine. There were good people, bad people, a bad person who really got his comeuppance (yay!), and morally in-between people. But give me 200 good pages of Kinsey and we'll call it a triumph.