The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey (c1991)

Written more than 20 years ago, age has not withered nor custom staled the infinite variety of the first in Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. In what seems such prescient writing now, Peter Diamond -- how unusual to give your main character your own name -- abhors the acceptance of the unimpeachability of scientific methods in determining whodunnit, while at the same time acknowledging its inevitability. Diamond is the "last detective" because he still uses his own faculties to ascertain clues. The book was written on the cusp of our new age of computer, scientific, and forensic obsessiveness (e.g.,  "CSI: Everywhere" and Patricia Cornwell's series, begun in 1990).

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Avon and Somerset police lives in Bath, is oblivious to the astounding ancient artifacts that abound in his area, blusters his way to one of the highest solution rates among the detectives, and for better or worse goes his own way. Eventually, of course, his occupational path must get worse.

For one thing, hanging over his head is a charge of intimidating a confession out of a suspect in London. While the charge is being investigated, he has been moved to the hinterlands, which is how he views Bath. Then he is assigned up-and-comer John Wigfull as his partner. John is full of something, for sure. He is younger, modern, and while not overly dismissive of Diamond's methods, he's obviously patronizing. There's a lot of eyebrow lifting on both Wigfull and Diamond's parts.

When the body of a woman is found in a lake, Diamond is off and running. He crows when the computers cannot collate data fast enough. (It's entered manually, Wigfull whines.) Cherchez la femme and Diamond has found two among the cast. Gerry Snoo, ex-actress, plays the body and the prime suspects are Professor Greg Jackman, her husband, and Dana Didrikson, the mother of a boy the professor rescues. Hints of love triangles, wanton seduction, and celebrity loopiness spice the story.

It's refreshing to meet a protagonist who does not have a cardinal defect (alcoholism, depression, Alzheimer's) but is merely vain. Pride and prejudice goeth before the fall in Jane Austen country. And, yes, there is a Jane Austen subplot. And, no, there are no zombies. Diamond is no matinee idol either. Why should a reader like him? He's fabulously seat-of-the-pants smart about psychology and has a well-earned instinct for piecing together a tale of criminal mischief.

The only part that bugged me -- because, truly, I found the writing superior, the characterizations zippy and captivating, and the Jane Austen subplot genius -- was the much-too-expeditious capitulation of one of the characters when accused of criminal monkey business towards the end of the book. Shades of Perry Mason!

Lovesey just released his 13th Diamond novel, "The Tooth Tattoo"!

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (hardcover, $27.99)

Unlike Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brody series, this is not a mystery, unless you want to say something philosophical like "life is a mystery."

What if you got to "do-over" your life if it ended up being boring or you missed an opportunity or you died too young? Or what if you were meant for something more? What if your life began again and again on the same snowy day in February 1910? If one of the times you were born, you didn't even make it past your first minute, what could be done differently?

Ursula Beresford Todd is destined for many iterations of her life. The basic formula for Ursula is this: born on a snowy day in 1910 in a village in England; parents are well-off; three of four siblings are okay, one is a prig; aunt is eccentric. Other appearing and disappearing elements are a housekeeper, maid, farmer, Jewish neighbors, best friend, several boyfriends, some nasty characters, WWII, Nazis, wartime bombing and deprivation. Shake it all up, see what falls out, and write a storyline.

As Ursula gets (maybe) deeper and deeper into her lifetimes, she begins to experience déjà vu. She has no specific knowledge of her prior or parallel lifetimes, but sometimes something passes through. Sometimes she just has a strong feeling that something bad will happen unless she acts.

Kate Atkinson has crafted an extraordinary book. For instance, Atkinson writes the story of Ursula's birth from many perspectives in many different ways, all of them intriguing, each story with a peculiarity of character or sequence of events.

The tangle of what-ifs never snarl; the many storylines just prod the reader to be a careful observer to determine what has changed in the next lifetime. 

Despite the manipulation of time, this is not sci-fi or fantasy. "Life After Life" is illuminating fiction. Atkinson has something to say about all the ways the human heart can soar, be hurt, be healed. Atkinson is a story manipulator, and she is very deft. "The Cloud Atlas" and "The Orphan-Master's Son" also used story manipulation, veering from a straightforward narrative, or even the modern penchant for split stories set in different time periods, and reached a point of sublime art. "Life After Life" floats just beneath. 

Children of Wrath by Paul Grossman ($15.99)

This is certainly an engrossing pre-WWII thriller set in Berlin, starring a Jewish police detective. It's not for the faint-of-heart, however. The main case Detective-Sergeant Willi Kraus must unravel? Missing children, lots of them, a scarily unknown number of them. Since a bag of children's bones was discovered in the sewer system, the authorities decide that the crime, for certainly there is a crime involved, must be heinous.

In 1930, although Berlin is at the forefront of the arts, architecture, and science, all of Germany is poised to head down the long road to economic upheaval and Nazi dominance. "Children of Wrath" is placed at the tipping point and chronicles the beginnings of the slide downwards. When the economic structure fails, there are a disturbing number of homeless and orphaned children roaming the streets. Someone is preying on these invisible ones.

And it is in 1930 Berlin that Willi suffers the humiliation of being a second-class citizen because he is Jewish. The ones who shout the loudest and impede him the most are his fellow Kripo agents and superiors. At first he is handed the case of the bag of bones. Then when the profile threatens to explode publicly, the case is taken away from him and given to Freksa, the media darling of Kripo.

Instead, Willi is given a case of food poisoning. A deadly bacteria has been mixed in with the city's ubiquitous sausages, and people are dying. Disgruntled and frustrated by his status in the department, Willi nevertheless tries to track down the source of the listeria. That is how he first comes into contact with the huge meat processing district, the Viehof. From live animal to consumer-ready meat and by-products, Willi learns the business. It is through his research and interviews there that he runs across a clue to what the media has dubbed "Der Kinderfesser," the child-eater.

Although there are times when "Children of Wrath" seems more like a travelogue than a thriller -- action stops as Paul Grossman points out the sights, hoping to anchor the story in the appropriate setting -- it manages to move along at a fast-enough pace. The main story is plenty scary, but it is the depiction of Willi's family life and the affect that prejudice has on them that is the real triumph for this book.

"Children of Wrath" is Paul Grossman's second book, following "The Sleepwalkers," the first Willi Kraus book. It is, however, the prequel to "The Sleepwalkers," taking place a couple of years before. In oddly satisfying epilogues, Grossman ends each book with a look into the future of the characters after WWII.

P.S. This may put you off sausages for a while.

The Rage, by Gene Kerrigan ($17)

This is a perfect novel. It won the British Crime Writers Association's 2012 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. And well it should.

Irish journalist Gene Kerrigan's fourth crime novel is beautifully constructed, with sharp and relevant dialogue, and not a superfluous word to be found.

The Dublin worlds of Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey and small-time crook Vincent Naylor are about to collide. Tidey is a morally upright but practical police detective. He will probably never rise above his current designation because he doesn't play office politics very well. Vincent has just gotten out of jail for beating a stranger who had cursed at him. His brother, Noel, has an idea for a grand score. He's found a security company employee who can give them information about armored car deliveries. (Okay, I have only one nagging thought and it has to do with this robbery storyline. How could an armored car driver, who says he's an underpaid little cog in the wheel, know so much about the big boss' routine and passwords? Not important, but nagging nevertheless.)

At first, a reader will assume the rage of the title refers to Vincent's flash temper and manic violent streak. An example of that is one of the first scenes in the book. Tidey's temper isn't obvious. It's slow to rise and the rest of the book is an example of what happens when it's finally engaged.

The Dublin depicted in "The Rage" has fallen on hard financial times after crazy, heady spending and lending by government and banks. Kerrigan writes, "Everyone knew the money-go-round would keep spinning as long as two or three bad things didn't happen simultaneously -- then four or five bad things happened at once." As a result, there are a lot of white-collar criminals, not all of whom have been legally chastised. One of them, banker Emmet Sweetman, meets his final punishment when gunmen murder him in his home.

Tidey is called in to work on the Sweetman case. A lot of police characters, both higher and lower in status, drift through the book, but each is there for a reason, each advances the plot. Looming largest is Detective Rose Cheney who is Tidey's provisional partner for the case.

It is another example of Kerrigan's talent that he is able to sketch their characters with a minimal of fuss. Tidey's ex-wife and daughter briefly appear early in the book, and serve the purpose of showing Tidey's caring side. Off-hand comments by Cheney establish her as a wife and mother. Their work on developing the Sweetman case establishes their competence and devotion to work. "Bob Tidey," Kerrigan writes, "was in the law and order business, and whatever else went belly-up, there'd always be hard men and chancers and a need for someone to put manners on them."

In the meantime, Vincent and Noel plan an elaborate heist. Kerrigan once again excels in description, this time of the criminal world they live in, especially the violence that is a calling card left by minor and major hoods. Vincent navigates the criminal hierarchy and carefully chooses his crew. In his own way, he is as meticulous as Tidey in his police investigations. 

Vincent's heist eventually touches the life of ex-nun and teacher Maura Coady. She, too, it is revealed has had her own brush with rage, and it has colored her life. She is the focal point through which Tidey and Vincent eventually cross paths.

Cold rage dominates the last third of the book. Pay-back and justice serve both good and bad masters. Moral ambiguity and shaky rationalization are their lackeys. Kerrigan impeccably draws all the threads together into a surprising and thought-provoking denouement. Although the plotting is complex, Kerrigan takes great pains not to lose his readers. He draws and re-draws the connections by making use of his subsidiary characters in multiple contexts. "The Rage" is Kerrigan's master class in plotting and clarity.

The novel begins with a scene of Tidey overlooking the Liffey River and wrestling with a thought. There is "No moral thing to do. But something had to be done." Then the book jumps back a few days to show what led Tidey to that point. The last third of the book returns to that scene and the choice Tidey makes. This is clean and brilliant scene twinning, and a marvelous thought-provoking denouement.