Lovesey's second novel starring Chichester CID inspector Henrietta "Hen" Mallin (after 2005's The Circle) provides further proof that the CWA Diamond Dagger winner has no peer in presenting a traditional mystery, with all the clues hiding in plain sight. When a half-naked female body washes up on a beach, Mallin and her team must identify the woman as well as determine whether she met her end through foul play. Before the corpse can be named, Jo Stevens, who found the body tangled in seaweed, comes across another one in remarkably similar circumstances. Fearing that she'll fall under Mallin's intense scrutiny, Stevens fails to report this second death. Between the alternating perspectives of Mallin and Stevens, the suspense builds, enhanced by credible characters and healthy doses of black humor. The police eventually connect the two cases and focus on Stevens's new beau, a laconic ex-con who had a past with both victims, but the solution is, of course, not so straightforward. Inspector Mallin deserves as long a fictional career as Lovesey's other current series sleuth, Peter Diamond. (Apr.)

In this second novel (after The Circle) to feature Inspector Henrietta "Hen" Mallin, Hen suspects a woman might be more directly involved in the murder of her boss than she admits. Award winner Lovesey never fails to entertain: his books are as complicated and well written as those of Ian Rankin and John Harvey. Here, the suspense will keep readers turning pages long into the night. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ12/07.]

Master craftsman Lovesey (The Secret Hangman, 2007, etc.) flaunts his deviousness with a plethora of wickedly plausible suspects. Gemma loathes her boss at the printing firm. Mr. Cartwright is so nice he's icky. Besides, she tells her pals Rick, Jake and Jo, a new employee, Fiona, has caught his attention and may use her feminine wiles to replace Gemma. So Rick, Jake, Jo and Gemma jokingly come up with ways to kill the loathed Mr. Cartwright. When he and Fiona go missing, the mock-conspirators come in for fierce police interrogations. Then Jo stumbles on a drowned woman in Selsey, near the site where a prehistoric mammoth was found 20 years ago. Worse, she finds another drowned woman in the mill pond opposite Fiona's house and yet another under the tarp covering Cartwright's swimming pool. Who are these women, and why have they been killed? Because he has a record, Jake comes under police suspicion first; then Rick, who has a bit of a temper; then the first victim's husband, a philandering professor on that mammoth dig. Jo, doing a touch of sleuthing herself, almost becomes the killer's final drowning victim before the coppers, abetted by a sweet little old lady in a pink hat, save the day. Lovesey makes it virtually impossible to figure out whodunit before he reveals all. Catnip for enthusiasts of the classic puzzler.