An exciting life!

 In Peter Heller's new novel Celine, the elegant Celine shows us her charms and quick shooting. A licensed PI, she lives near the Brooklyn Bridge. She and her partner/husband, Pete, specialize in finding missing persons, with a success rate higher than that of the FBI. The main plot centers on a daughter's quest for her father, who "disappeared" at Yellowstone many years back, supposedly mauled by a grizzly.  Hired by the desperate daughter, Celine learns that local trackers and lawmen doubt the bear story, and as she and Pete approach the park, they realize they're being shadowed by an FBI sniper. The missing father was a charismatic, world-famous National Geographic photographer who had been in Chile during the overthrow of President Salvador Allende; eventually we learn that he had pictures that compromised the current government. Near the conclusion, the G-man tries to take them out, but the 68-year-old asthmatic Celine is also a quick draw. Fun and exciting! ML

Michigan Mystery

Steve Hamiltons first novel A Cold Day in Paradise is a winner. Not only did it recieve the Edgar Award for Best First Novel but it also won the Shamus Award. The main character, Alex McNight, is a Detroit cop who has retired to Michigan's upper peninsula after being shot. Alex is enjoying the peaceful, slow pace of the U.P., tending a hunting camp, playing cards with friends and doing casual private eye work for the local lawyer, until he suddenly becomes involved in murder. This book could be called a typical hardboiled detective novel but it's a lot more than that. It's fun to read because it takes place in the U.P., it's a great read because it catches you from the first page, and it's a fantastic story because the plot twists and turns unexpectedly. A Cold Day in Paradise is the first book in the Alex McNight series. SG