A Door in the River, by Inger Ash Wolfe (hardcover, $25.95)

Inger Ash Wolfe's three books are such an odd mixture of charming and gruesome.

In The Calling, the first book in the series, we met the headstrong, awkward, and intuitive Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef of the Port Dundas, Canada, police force. Although she was the interim commanding officer of the force in that book, by the time of A Door in the River, the town of Port Dundas is changing and a past subordinate has returned to be her boss. The outside world is invading small-town Port Dundas with a vengeance, and none of it is good.

Hazel's mother and housemate, the peremptory and equally strong-willed Emily Micallef, the former mayor of Port Dundas, is fading. The new detective constable, James Wingate, needs a vacation after the events of the past few months. (Although the novels appeared over a space of three years, the events in the books take place within about a year.) All is in flux when this story begins.

As Wolfe has similarly begun in the prior books, an impossibly strange series of crimes has occurred. It begins when an autopsy shows that Henry Wiest, a resident of Port Dundas, died of a bee sting. But he died late at night in the parking lot of a First Nation reservation smoke shop. Henry didn't even smoke and bees are not nocturnal. Hazel bulls her way through the investigation, never mind the niceties of notifying higher-ups, acquiring warrants, or following the law. It's hard not to like Hazel.

It's a book I'd like to recommend to people who enjoy good characters, but the queasy psychopathic element is limiting. Nevertheless, there is something compelling about Hazel and her gang. I chose The Calling as a year's best pick in 2009, and I continue to be a fan.

This is why Wolfe's writing exceeds expectations:

Her instinct every time she reached this juncture, when the temperature of an investigation went up beyond her comfort zone, when she knew time was flowing through her hands like water dashed from a bucket, was to push. Something seemingly immovable would have to be moved.

P.S. There were a lot of people happily guessing away at the real identity of Inger Ash Wolfe, an admitted pseudonym. Wolfe is really Canadian author Michael Redhill. He said that his books written under his real name are about elements that are missing or have disappeared, so "Pseudonymity would turn out to be a theme in The Calling, and it spoke directly to my obsession with the possibilities of the hidden life."

The Absent One, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (hardcover, $26.95)

I loved The Keeper of Lost Causes. It introduced two eccentric characters, Carl Mørck, the head of and sole officer assigned to Department Q of the Copenhagen police, and Hafez el-Assad, his civilian assistant, who comes complete with prayer rug and thick, sweet coffee. Department Q is the newly formed cold case section. Carl has been assigned to it because he's a good detective but a difficult, caustic, antisocial human being. He does not play well in the sandbox, so why not give him his own sandbox?

Carl and Assad achieved a measure of success in their first case, so the powers-that-be must tolerate them, while not moving them out of their basement dungeon or giving them any actual benefits. To "help" with his duties, Carl has been assigned an additional person, Rose, a woman who washed out of the police academy but qualified to hold a civilian job with the department. And, yes, she's very odd. "Q" apparently stands for qnot-qwanted-qanywhere-qelse. It would have been fine had the book been mostly about them, but it's mostly not.

Adler-Olsen takes us into the minds of a group of psychologically stunted, high-achieving individuals, a group of men and one woman who have known each other since a sick bond was forged in prep school. Kirsten-Marie Lassen, "Kimmie," has not had direct contact with the men for quite a while when the story starts. She's living on the streets but seems to have a lot of money. She's afraid, yet she's also a stalker.

Right from the start, Adler-Olsen takes most of the mystery out of the story. The case Carl and Assad decide to investigate is the murder of a brother and sister about twenty years earlier. One of the group confessed to the crime nine years later, and he currently languishes in prison. Carl and Assad become convinced that there is more to the story, and that's how they discover the group. As teenagers they were emotional and physical bullies. The key to unlocking the group dynamic seems to rest with Kimmie, so the book is really about finding Kimmie and discovering what makes her run.

The story is too long.

Too much from the point of view of Ditlev Pram, a private hospital entrepreneur, Torsten Florin, a fashion designer, and Ulrick Dybbøl Jensen, a stock market analyst. Kristian Wolf, a shipping magnate, is dead. Bjarne Thøgersen is in jail. They're sick. Let's not dwell too long on their inner workings. They want to find Kimmie and Kimmie wants to find them. Bam. Move along to the hunt.

Let's get back to Carl and his dysfunctional department. A group of Norwegian police representatives want to visit Carl to talk about his spectacular police work. Carl's bosses want to limit access to him because he's grumpy and unpredictable. Carl has no interest in meeting the unintelligible Norwegians anyway, but the inevitable must happen. It's a humorous touch to lighten what is a heavy load.

The relationship between Carl and Assad is slowly evolving. Into what probably won't be seen until a future book. Here Adler-Olsen simply is establishing that there's more to Assad than meets the eye. This partnership is what makes the series, and it's enjoyable to watch them track down the group and discover just what crimes the members have committed.

Warning: There are many graphic scenes and the resolution is particularly gruesome. Just so you know.

Harry Lipkin, Private Eye (hardcover, $24)

If Dragnet's Joe Friday were Jewish, funny, 87, and a private eye in Florida, he would be Harry Lipkin.

Harry, the octogenarian, is hired by a Norma Weinberger, a rich septuagenarian, to find articles that have disappeared in her home. She suspects one of her staff. Harry meticulously investigates each in turn, discovering their secret lives. Here is Harry trying to get the taciturn chauffeur to talk to him:

I decided to give him one of those questions you have to answer. It wasn't hard. It wasn't, what is the ratio of a square root of the power of a minus ten multiplied by the angle of the circumference? Or, how can anyone eat chicken soup without matzo balls? 

It was this. "What's your name, bud? First name, second name, and any you can think of in the middle."

Harry calls on contacts he has developed over many years living in Florida to help him with pieces of the puzzle. In the process, we learn a little more about Harry. He frequently reminisces about his earlier life. For instance:

I thought about my life back then. Not a worry in the world. I drank a little. I shot craps. I met dames with big smiles and no plans for the future. Then came Hitler. I joined the Marines. Hitler's show closed they put me on a troop ship home. After a year looking for work I got a job with the Miami Police Department. After three years I'd had enough of shift work and routine. I quit being a cop and took out a Private Investigator's license. It's been one hell of a game.

Barry Fantoni does a wonderful job letting Harry Lipkin tell his own story. It's funny and poignant and unexpected.

Blackberry Winter, by Sarah Jio ($15)

There is a death. It probably was murder. But mostly it is a simple romance.

In May, 1933, a sudden snowstorm blanketed the city of Seattle. During that snowstorm, 3-year-old Daniel disappeared from the apartment he shared with his mother, Vera. They were a half step from starvation in a time when very few people had much. Vera was working as a maid in a hotel and had to leave him asleep at home, alone. When she returned after work, Daniel was gone.

In the present time, Claire Aldridge is a reporter for a paper owned by her husband's family. It is May and there is an unexpected snowstorm. Someone somewhere nicknamed this sort of late storm a "blackberry winter." Claire and her husband had lost their baby a year before when a pregnant Claire was hit by a car. Since then, she has lacked enthusiasm, direction, purpose. Her marriage is faltering.

Claire's editor gives her the assignment of finding a human interest story to tie the two blackberry winters together. That is when Claire discovers Vera and Daniel's story. Suddenly some of Claire's focus returns as she begins to track down what happened to Vera and Daniel.

The book goes back and forth between the two stories. It is easy to guess that somewhere along the line the stories will cross. It is easy to assume that Claire will find out what happened. This is a sweet, undemanding tale. Vera has to do something morally repugnant to get help in finding Daniel, but other than that, it's like a fairy tale.