6 Detective Series to Savor

By Johanna McGeary

PETER ROBINSON

INSPECTOR ALAN BANKS

England's Yorkshire dales have their bleak moods, but they're not nearly as haunted as those that drive the melancholy head of the Eastvale murder squad. In his 15th procedural, Strange Affair, Banks must plumb his own brooding depths to unravel the disappearance of his brother. The crimes in this series can be grisly, but pleasure comes from watching the nuances of Banks' character rise to the surface.

DONNA LEON

COMMISSARIO GUIDO BRUNETTI

No one knows the labyrinthine world of Venice or the way favoritism and corruption shape Italian life like Leon's Brunetti. Blood from a Stone is not her best plot, but fortunately all 13 other Brunettis are now in paperback for those who have not yet met the thoughtful Venetian cop with a love of food, an outspoken wife and a computer-hacker secretary who plays man Friday to his detective.

JOHN LAWTON

INSPECTOR TROY

London under siege in World War II is Lawton's prime subject, brilliantly evoked even when Troy, now a Scotland Yard chief superintendent, sets off in pursuit of a cop killer in 1959. In Flesh Wounds, you can feel the gritty pain of a city that has barely begun to rebuild from the ruins of the blitz, as Troy finds his trail winding backward to bloody events in the grim winter of 1941.

LINDSEY DAVIS

MARCUS DIDIUS FALCO, P.I.

Yep, even ancient Rome had its shamuses. Falco wisecracks his way through the empire's sleazy underside to provide amusing lessons on the way crime, greed and cover-ups were endemic even in 70 B.C. In the 17th Falco novel, See Delphi and Die, the Eternal City's original tough guy takes on the tourist industry. (Rome invented that too.) Davis' crimes are wickedly convoluted, but Falco's facetious tongue and domestic complications are the real fun.

PHILIP KERR

WORLD WAR II THRILLERS

Nazi Germany is Kerr's protagonist in four gripping tales. The latest, Hitler's Peace, is a cunning what-if riff on the little-remembered 1943 Big Three conference to set the rules for German surrender. Yes, it's actually thrilling. And it will make you rush to read Berlin Noir (out in paper), a masterly trio of mysteries starring ex-cop Bernie Gunther as he struggles with notions of justice in 1930's Germany, soaked in the seamy authenticity of Hitler's world.

JACQUELINE WINSPEAR

MAISIE DOBBS, INVESTIGATOR

Female detectives are usually tough (Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski) or cute (Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe). Maisie, whose card reads PSYCHOLOGIST AND INVESTIGATOR, is neither: she's a cerebral, vulnerable inquisitor who takes up sleuthing in the late 1930s to heal the trauma she experienced as a nurse in the Great War. Set in an era when women were grappling with modernity, Pardonable Lies, the third of this young series, sends Maisie on a quest for truth, during which secrets and lies lead instead to self-discovery. --By Johanna McGeary