Summer reading

P Is for Peril
By Sue Grafton
Putnam, 304 pages

In Sue Grafton's mystery novels, private investigator Kinsey Millhone is perpetually stuck in the suburban Los Angeles of the 1980s -- a land of shoulder pads, big hair and Big Macs. In "P Is for Peril," the 16th installment in her alphabetic series, you can't help but feel sorry for the persistent but beleaguered Millhone: If only she had access to a cellphone and the Internet, her job would be a hell of a lot easier.

But part of the charm of Grafton's mysteries is this somewhat sadistic setting, and the novelty of watching classic noir tales unfold in a time that's not quite antique but not entirely modern either. Grafton's other talent is spinning a well-crafted mystery: In "P Is for Peril," Millhone is hired to locate a missing Dr. Purcell, who has disappeared without a trace. His former wife thinks he's hiding from his current wife, an ex-stripper who was rumored to be cheating on him. Millhone thinks his vanishing might have something to do with a Medicare scandal at the retirement home that Purcell ran.

Although Grafton mistakenly meanders into a strained side-plot that involves a pair of patricidal brothers, the book's overarching story delivers exactly what it promises: a compelling mystery that manages to pull off a surprise at the end. And as a humanized female version of Dashiell Hammett's loner hard-boiled detective, Millhone is still an oddly compelling presence in the world of mystery novels.

Grafton has been laboriously working her way through the alphabet for 18 years now; by the time she gets to Z (is for Zen? for Zealous? for Zebra?), it will be 2012, we'll all be zipping around in jet cars and Millhone -- firmly lodged in 1987 -- will truly feel like an anachronism. For now, however, Grafton's novels are timeless reading for those moments when all you want is a good puzzle.

-- Janelle Brown

Blood Washes Blood
By Frank Viviano
Pocket Books, 270 pages

Come for the blood-and-vengeance motif, stay for the sunny, breezy, lemon tree-scented Sicilian setting. This enjoyable, surprisingly brainy and deep book manages to live up to its shamelessly base-covering subtitle ("A True Story of Love, Murder and Redemption Under the Sicilian Sun"). Viviano, a foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle who has covered major world events ranging from Tiananmen Square to the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo, puts so many balls into the air that "Blood Washes Blood" takes a couple of chapters to settle into itself. When it does, you can sit back and enjoy its fast-moving parade of themes and stories.

There's historical suspense: Viviano sets out to solve an old family mystery, the identity of the man who killed his great-grandfather, his namesake, in 1860s Sicily. There's an absorbing multigenerational saga: the history of Viviano's immigrant family as it travels from Sicily to New York to Detroit. "Blood Washes Blood" is blissfully short on sentimentality and long on sharp considerations of the meaning of family bonds. Along with the more personal material, Viviano offers a fascinating account of the ruthless, bloody Mafia wars that took place in Sicily in the early '90s. The trial of notoriously brutal Mafia boss Antonio "Toto" Riina, who had ordered the car-bomb murder of Judge Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia crusader who had split open the Sicilian underworld, took place as Viviano was in Sicily researching his family history, and he was transfixed by the trial along with his Sicilian neighbors.

And finally, there's a satisfying dose of Sicily itself, which comes alive in Viviano's descriptions of its twisty, always partly hidden history and equally portentous present. In clear reporter's prose that occasionally approaches a sort of brusque poetry, he gets to the paradoxical heart of the patient yet explosive Sicilian character: "Extraordinary events transpired there -- the phenomenal mayhem of Riina's struggle with Badalamenti, the consolidation of a global underworld empire -- while it seemed that nothing happened at all."

-- Maria Russo

Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI
By Candice DeLong
Hyperion, 303 pages

If you judge by TV shows like "The X-Files" and movies like "Silence of the Lambs," women FBI agents are solitary types who rarely smile. And as for profilers -- those agents who construct psychological descriptions of perpetrators by analyzing aspects of their crimes -- well, you know they actually get inside the heads of serial killers and other sick maniacs. That, of course, makes them even more haunted than your run-of-the-mill crime fighter who's seen things, terrible things, that keep her lying awake at night in her lonely room.

Candice DeLong, a pint-size, wisecracking single mom who was among the first generation of women to graduate from the agency's Quantico academy, knocks over that stereotype with one kick of her well-trained foot. A former psychiatric nurse who decided she "wanted to be out on the front lines, battling evil with the troops," DeLong not only became one of the agency's first profilers, but also worked undercover (posing as a gangster's date, among other choice roles), followed terrorists, saved children from pedophiliac kidnappers, investigated the Tylenol Murderer and staked out the Unabomber. During her off hours, she served hot dog lunches to her son's elementary school class and wallpapered the Victorian house she bought in an "idyllic" Chicago suburb. (Her two worlds did sometimes collide: DeLong's jacket slipped open in the lunchroom, prompting one of the kids to shout "Seth's mommy has a gun!") Oh, and she helped track down a serial rapist who was terrorizing her neighborhood.

Although it's short on suspenseful crime-detection yarns, DeLong's memoir is still a page-turner, a surprisingly buoyant account by a woman who just loved her job (she's now retired). "Special Agent" is packed with the fascinating lore of law enforcement -- that white people commit most mass murders, that the local cops' dislike for a federal agent will be significantly ameliorated once they learn she's a nurse (cops love nurses, she explains) and so on. DeLong had a reputation for dishing out sassy comebacks to cursing suspects ("That's Miss Federal Pig to you" is my favorite, but "Well, I'm not the one wearing handcuffs" is pretty good, too), but she was also the consummate diplomat. "Special Agent" offers a model account of how to behave when you're a woman pioneer in what's long been a male preserve. Though she recognizes the prejudice and injustice of the sexism she meets, DeLong works hard, stands up for herself without scolding, picks her battles shrewdly, forms warm alliances with the good guys and heartily supports the other talented women agents she meets. After the past few years of embarrassing debacles at the FBI, that DeLong managed to thrive there is the best press the agency has had in a long time.

-- Laura Miller

The Rackets
By Thomas Kelly
Farrar Straus & Giroux, 368 pages

Set in the Giuliani era, "The Rackets" takes you behind the scenes of New York politics to reveal a city rich in simmering cultural conflicts. It's got everything you could want in a quick urban crime read: engaging characters from both sides of the tracks running classic scams and struggling not to get taken down by an endemic corruption. Kelly invokes dozens of classic portrayals of the same turf -- everything from "The Godfather" through "Donnie Brasco" -- in this story of people chasing their lost immigrant roots.

Set during mayoral and union elections, "The Rackets" begins as the mayor's advance man, Jimmy Dolan, gets in a dust-up with Frank Keefe, the head of the local Teamsters. Jimmy's given his walking papers and is forced to return to Inwood, his old neighborhood on the northern tip of Manhattan. Since Jimmy pisses off Keefe and Jimmy's dad, Mike, is running against Keefe to lead the union, there's plenty of tension between the two men, and it only gets worse when a local mafioso, Franky Magic, enters the scene. He's afraid that Keefe will lose the Teamsters election and figures a return to the old code of violence would be a necessary -- and exciting -- way to get everyone back in line. From there on out, it's two trains screaming toward a collision.

The plot line is clear within the first 20 pages, but Kelly makes the book an engaging read by developing a varied cast of characters who transcend the typical crime novel figures. The pages he devotes to each major player's passing thoughts and emotional quirks gives you glimpses into every corner of a New York constantly preoccupied with power, class and personal legitimacy. The only thing that all of Kelly's people can agree on is the importance of reclaiming the simpler traditions of their Irish heritage and their distaste for the cultural changes that have swallowed their old neighborhoods and upended the familiar social order. Kelly uses the peculiar slang of their milieu -- guys are "skels," you "take" a heart attack instead of having one -- to reinforce the sense of a cohesive neighborhood culture. Hell, even Jimmy Breslin makes a guest appearance and the blessing is well deserved.

-- Max Garrone

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