Shelf awareness

It's a big day for mystery lovers of all stripes as a host of new titles are now on sale. In no particular order:
Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman features the return of Alex Delaware who teams up with LAPD detective Milo Sturges on a hunt for a killer who has a penchant for black automobiles. We meet hookers, commodities brokers and a missing school girl. It's number 22 in the dependable series.
Speaking of dependable series, Thomas Pitt is on the case in Anne Perry's Buckingham Palace Gardens. When the body of a mutilated prostitute is found in a cupboard in Buckingham Palace, Pitt is called in to stave off scandal; seems that the prince of Wales was hosting a stag party, and none of this looks good for his succession to the throne. This is the 25th in the series with more to come.
Hollywood Nate Weiss and Bix Ramstead go out for a little fun and come up with a heap of trouble in Joseph Wambaugh's Hollywood Crows. There's a femme fatale, a seedy nightclub owner and plenty of gallows humor; pretty much what you'd expect from Wambaugh in this followup to Hollywood Station.
Carolyn Hart offers more Death On Demand in Death Walked In, in which Annie Darling comforts a dying shooting victim and Max joins her to find the killer(s).
For those who like their settings Southern, their atmosphere light and their protagonist cantankerous, Anne B. Ross offers a hearty helping of each in Miss Julia Paints the Town. Here you'll get missing husbands, mysterious visions and a host of eccentrics in this eighth outing of Julia Springer Murdoch and friends.
Those seeking a bit of romantic suspense and some otherworldly doings can check out Heather Graham's Death Dealer, her sequel to the bestseller, The Dead Room. There's nothing like a crazed serial killer inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's stories and a high body count to keep you reading into the wee hours.
Available in paperback: Bad Luck and Trouble, the 11th Jack Reacher novel from Lee Child, is out and anyone who read it will tell you that not only is Jack back but he's got some great banter, a host of villains and a knockout ending.

The future is looking bright

Anglophiles among mystery readers got some good news recently.

The March 17 edition of Publishers' Weekly announced that Anne Perry had just penned an agreement with Random House to deliver four more mysteries. There will be two new Thomas and Charoltte Pitt books (that will bring the total to 27) and two new William Monk titles (bringing that series up to 18 titles). But they won't show up until after Perry's The Sheen on the Silk, a stand-alone due out in 2010.

Meanwhile, I was trolling the U.K. bookwebs and found something that really excited me. After nearly a decade away, John Harvey's latest novel Cold In Hand brings back D.I. Charlie Resnick. What could be better? Now that the early Resnick's have found a champion in Bloody Brits (four Resnicks already reissued with the rest to come), Cold In Hand will be published here in the States in September, the same month we get a reissue of Easy Meat (let's hope we see Last Rites soon) and a week before Gone to Ground hits paperback.

Life is good.