Travis McGee called himself a salvage expert. He would recover things that could never be recovered by any other means, and he would take half.  He took his retirement in increments.  When he had money he retired and when he was out he took jobs.  He lives on his boat the Busted Flush in Fort Lauderdale Florida.  But sometimes he salvages people's lives.  In Pale Gray For Guilt, McGee is after the people who killed an old friend, Tush Bannon.  Tush was a retired pro football player working to build a small marina and lodge to support his wife and three children.  Someone, somewhere was doing their best to destroy his dream, not to mention the ecosystem.  MacDonald frequently used his character McGee to give voice to his disdain to the people destroying the Florida ecosystem.  McGee's musing as I reread this 1968 story are still relevant today, scary isn't it, what haven't we learned?

John D. MacDonald was considered the very best of the best of private eye fiction authors.  He started in the pulps, where he wrote hundreds of stories, under many pseudonyms, because sometimes the whole magazine was nothing but his stories!  When he started the Travis McGee series he wasn't sure that he wanted to be tied down to one character, but he wrote three books, one right after the other and decided that he liked his character and could continue.  MacDonald didn't want to number the 21 Travis McGee books, because he didn't want to force the reader to read in any order, so all his Travis McGee stories have a color in the title and somewhere in the story you will find the title phrase.   He won all the major mystery/ thriller awards.  Many writers of today acknowledge his influence on their writing.  If you like a rip roaring adventure with some environmentalism  thrown in, not to mention beautiful smart and a few dumb women that he helps or hurts (just the bad ones) along the way, you certainly will enjoy Travis McGee in Pale Gray for Guilt and it will probably hook you to read the other twenty novels.

Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

If you like the wildly popular Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy by Stieg Larsson, but may be slightly turned off by some of the overt sexual violence in the books, then it's worth taking a look at this crime thriller by fellow Swedish author Leif Persson. In it you get a lot of the suspense and drama that you will find in the Larsson books, but with more of an emphasis on the criminal investigative process, and how that process may not always work so smoothly.  Persson's knowledge of the criminal justice system is very clear, and you learn a lot of how it works, from top to bottom. This novel follows the path of Swedish police superintendent Lars Johansson, who begins investigating a supposed suicide of an American journalist, which exposes deeper and deeper intrigue with links to the CIA and Sweden's secret police force, leading to a tragedy which could have ultimately been averted, if not for the corruption within the system. Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End is a very detailed and informed criminal drama, which will keep you reading until the final suspenseful conclusion.

Chalk Girl by Carol O'Connell

If you like your leading female character intelligent and tough, check out Carol O'Connell's newest Kathy Mallory book. Mallory developed her own moral code and sense of justice while surviving alone on the streets as a young child. As an NYPD Detective, she is a fierce protector of victims and a ruthless pursuer of those who do harm and her pursuit of the guilty is not always by the book.

Coco, a small, elfin featured, redheaded little girl, is discovered alone in Central Park. She has blood drops on her shirt and an encyclopedic knowledge of rats. She tells the police officer that her uncle turned into a tree. Obviously, the child has a vivid imagination! But when a man is found bound, blindfolded, gagged and hanging in a tree, Mallory and her partner Riker know that she is really their witness. With quick legal work, Coco is put into the protective custody of Charles Butler, a psychologist and consultant to the NYPD. He discovers Coco has Williams Syndrome, a condition that causes her to seek hugs from strangers and puts her at grave risk for being exploited. Soon, Mallory discovers that the man in the tree was not Coco's uncle but her abductor.

Coco knows more about what happened to her than she is able to clearly express. She is extremely bright but thinks differently. She is an extraordinary pianist but she can't button her clothes or tie her shoes. It will take time for Coco to talk about what happened and time to decipher her cryptic memories. Mallory has to protect Coco until she can figure out who is involved and stop them.

Mallory's investigation leads from the current crime in the park to a similar crime that happened 15 years ago. That crime was never recorded but was buried so deeply that the perpetrators thought it would never be discovered. Mallory takes on the wealthy and the powerful in order to bring justice to a young boy they wanted forgotten.

But Lenox' powers of observation quickly lead him to believe otherwise.  Prue indeed died of poisoning, but not by the arsenic in the bottle next to her bedside.  Instead, she ingested the rare bella indigo, or the "beautiful blue," a form of deadly nightshade.  Ably assisted by his doctor friend, Thomas McConnell, and his butler, Graham, Lenox begins to investigate the circumstances around Prue's death, although he must be discreet - Scotland Yard is officially in charge. 

Despite a raft of suspects and the discovery that Prue had several romantic entanglements, Lenox is unable to determine a motive for her killing. He learns that the employer, the director of the mint, had been secretly storing the mint's gold in his mansion - did Prue find out? When another body turns up at a society ball, the plot once again thickens and Lenox must reassess his suspicions.   

Full of period detail from the Victorian age, contrasting the lives of the upper class and those who serve them, this novel will have great appeal to historical mystery lovers.  The characters are vividly drawn; Graham, not only an impeccable servant, but also an accomplished sleuth and sidekick, reminded me of Wimsey's Bunter. Lady Jane, the beautiful, intelligent, and sympathetic widow, may prove to be the romantic interest that will entice Lenox from his state of bachelorhood.  Read on to find out more: the fifth and latest in the series, A Burial at Sea, was released in November 2011.

Born To Die by Lisa Jackson

Dr. Kasey Lambert has returned to Grizzly Falls Montana to practice medicine. Leaving Seattle behind along with a failed marriage, she is happy to settle into her grandparent's old farmhouse outside of town. Life is moving along smoothly until two deaths make the news.

Shelly Bonaventure, a B movie actress dies in Hollywood in what appears to be a suicide. But there are certain aspects of her death that have the lead detective questioning that assumption. The second death is of a school teacher right in Grizzly Falls. She has fallen off a snowy mountain path while jogging. Her death looks like an accident until arsenic is found in her system.

Kasey is saddened by the deaths but would not have thought much more about them if it weren't for people remarking on how much Kasey looks like the two women. And when a new patient of Kasey's, who also looks very much like her, is killed when her van goes off the road into the river, Kasey is feeling very uneasy about living alone in a secluded house.

Trace O'Halleran, a good looking rancher and single father, meets Kasey when he brings his son into her clinic. He is attracted to Kasey, possibly because she looks remarkably like his ex-wife who has not been in contact with her son or Trace for months. Trace and Kasey discover they are both searching for answers about the women being killed and they join forces to find out what connects these women before the killer finds Kasey.

It's winter in Syracuse, cold and dark and snowy. Lena can remember bits and pieces of her childhood in the jungle, before she was found and then went to live with Pia and Henry. They kept saying they would adopt her when they got all the papers together, but it never happened and Lena lives with knowing that she wasn't the daughter they really wanted. She has always wondered what happened to her birth parents, and maybe that is why she feels such a connection to the families that are losing their babies. There are too many to fit the normal pattern, and as Lena tries to put it all together, she begins to wonder if the deaths could really be murder, and how she fits into the picture.

This book has the same flowing, descriptive writing style of Diana Abu-Jaber's earlier books. It seems to meander along, but at some point you realize you're sitting on the edge of your seat, biting your nails. For an intriguing mystery with haunting atmosphere, read Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber.

In A Spark Of Death, the first Professor Bradshaw mystery, we meet the UW professor leaving his classroom aftera student exam. On his way out of the building, a sudden dimming of the lights alerts him of a power surge in the electric lab, home of the newElectric Machine. There he discovers the lifeless body of his colleague, Professor Oglethorpe, who appears to have been electrocuted. Complicating matters is the fact thatOglethorpe and Bradshaw were adversaries, and police immediately suspect him of foul play.

In an effort to clear his name and discover the true culprit, the ever-organized Bradshaw decides to chart the movements and possible motives of all the potential suspects. Could it be his friend Henry, who suddenly left town for Alaska the day of the murder? Orwas ita plot by anarchists, connected to the upcoming visit of President McKinley the next day? Or perhaps, a student seeking revenge against a professor known for his unfair treatment of his pupils?

Interwoven with the mystery plot, we learn of Bradshaw's family life,and the tragic event that made him a single parent.We meet Bradshaw's young son, Justin, his tough but soft-hearted Irish housekeeper, Mrs. Prouty,and Henry's free-spirited niece, Missouri, who appears on his doorstep seeking refuge. As the professor digs deeper into the mystery of Oglethorpe's death, another death occurs that may be related. An electrical fire destroys a building in Seattle, and Bradshaw soon begins to see similarities among these crimes.Then, in an ominous turn of events, he finds his own life endangered on avisit to Snoqualmie Falls.Someone is out to stop him fromfinding the truth.

As a Seattleite and a science buff, I appreciated the attention tolocalhistory and to the development of electricityin Pajer'sdebut novel. Ilook forward to reading thesecond Bradshaw mystery, Fatal Induction, due out in May 2012.

In The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, Nell grows up not knowing the mystery of her early childhood, until Hughreveals the secreton her twenty-first birthday. Nell is devastated and feels as if her entire life has been a lie. Yet she has no clue to finding out about her past. It's not until Hugh's death many years later, that she discovers the little suitcase she was carrying in 1913.One of the clues inside is a book of fairy tales written in 1913 by Eliza Makepeace, and illustrated by Nathaniel Walker.Could this book contain the secrets to help unlock the mystery of Nell's childhood?

Nell's search for her childhood roots extends across two generations, as her granddaughter Cassandra seeks for the truth after Nell's death in 2005. Cassandra was taken in by her grandmother at age ten when her mother dropped her off and never returned. Cassandrais surprised to find that Nellhas lefther a cottage in England as her inheritance.When she journeys to Blackhurst Manor in Cornwall, once the home of the Mountrachet family, she begins toput together the puzzleof her grandmother's life. She also discovers her long lost love of painting, a talent she gave up when tragedy struck in her life several years ago.

Multiple stories are interwoven in the novel, which takes us back and forth in time from Eliza'slife of cruel poverty in London, to Rose Mountrachet's childhood at Blackhurst, to Nell'slife in Brisbane, and to Cassandra'sjourneys to untangle the web of mysteries in her past. It'sa tale full ofmystery and magic, poverty and grandeur,loss and discovery. British author Kate Mortonhas also written the bestseller The House at Riverton.

Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes-characters even-caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.