"Purple Cane Road"
by James Lee Burke
(Doubleday).
Cajun cop Dave Robicheaux's adventures are some of the most ruggedly heartfelt works in contemporary mysteries. Here, the author finds gold in the same fertile veins he's mined for years: government corruption, friction between rich and poor, byzantine race relations, the struggles of the underdog. The plot - which avoids the author's fondness for unnecessarily ornate story lines - hinges on a casual remark that sends Robicheaux searching for the mother he barely knew.

"The Remorseful Day"
by Colin Dexter
(Crown).
Few fictional detectives since Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot have mustered the brain power (or the irascibility) of Chief Inspector Morse, the Oxford homicide cop in Dexter's long-running series. When his superior reopens an unsolved case - the bludgeoning of a nurse - Morse takes it on reluctantly, for what prove to be poignant reasons. This book is the final Inspector Morse novel; he'll be missed.

"Hot Six"
by Janet Evanovich
(St. Martin's Press).
So Stephanie Plum is the world's most incompetent bounty hunter? She's still a hoot - scouring Trenton for pathetic bail-jumpers, snarfing meals at her mom's, teasing her hair, trying to get cozy with her policeman sweetie. When her fellow bounty hunter Ranger is suspected in the murder of a crime boss's son, Stephanie goes to work. Her techniques include inadvertently making friends with the crime boss, then sneaking him out to buy forbidden cigarettes.

"The Deader the Better"
by G.M. Ford,
(Avon).
Smarty-pants Seattle private eye Leo Waterman spends most of this rousing book in a tiny Olympic Peninsula town, where his fabled family connections to Seattle government are useless. A talented fishing guide dies in a car crash and his fishing lodge burns, but locals are reluctant to talk about it. Waterman assembles his own version of the Dirty Dozen (including alcoholics, a hooker, a surveillance expert and a cat burglar) to uncover the town's dirty secret.

"Shattered"
by Dick Francis
(Putnam's).
Traditionalist fans will rejoice in this return (after uneasy experiments elsewhere) to what made Francis famous: the world of British horse racing. Martin Stukely, a jockey, dies just before giving a videotape to his friend, glass artist Gerard Logan. When villains do everything to find the tape, including viciously beating the glass artist, it falls to him to sort it out - and use the occasion to get close to an attractive police detective.

"Sold Down the River"
by Barbara Hambly
(Bantam).
Benjamin January - Paris-educated, a cultivated musician - is a free black man in New Orleans during slave times. To avert a rebellion dangerous for white and black alike, he goes undercover as a slave. The setting of old Louisiana is vivid, the horrors of slavery all too real. Furthermore, this gripping tale avoids the genre's main pitfall: lectures showing off the author's research, clumsily inserted in the narrative.

"Blue Deer Thaw"
by Jamie Harrison
(Hyperion).
The pleasures in Montana writer Harrison's laconic books are many, but thrills and spills aren't among them. Expect instead from her consistently strong storytelling, bone-dry humor and affectionate portraits of some seriously cracked citizens. Jules Clement, Absaroka County's reluctant and overeducated sheriff, does his best to maintain order. But April thaws bring trouble: a frozen woman, an old guy with valuable antiquities and greedy relatives, a man who apparently slit his own throat, and the massively complicated wedding of Jules' friends.

"At End of Day"
by George V. Higgins
(Harcourt, Brace).
The man with the golden ear for dialogue and the wicked touch for storytelling died late in 1999, shortly after finishing this book. Based on a real story, it revolves around the uneasy alliance of two FBI agents and two gents who thrive as what O. Henry called "successful dodgers of retribution." The line between the good guys (decent but corruptible) and the bad guys (villainous but human) blurs - meat and potatoes for Higgins. Years ago I started saying, and now repeat: It's a sin and a shame that George V. Higgins never won the Pulitzer Prize.

"Pagan Babies"
by Elmore Leonard
(Delacorte).
The King Daddy of crime fiction, hip / funny / tough division, knocks another one out of the park. After witnessing the horrifying war in Rwanda, Terry Dunn - a priest, sort of - heads home to Detroit, which he's been avoiding because of some unpleasantness with the law. Meanwhile, Debbie Dewey is fresh out of prison and trying to make it as a stand-up comic. Terry wants cash for the children of Rwanda; Debbie wants it to settle matters with her slimy ex-husband. Leonard gleefully lets these two meet, plan a score, then jostle to see who's going to get the money.

"Shame the Devil"
by George Pelecanos
(Little, Brown).
This gritty, perfectly pitched slice of urban life moves the author's saga of Washington, D.C., into the '90s. When a robbery goes wrong, two people die: the brother of the chief villain and a toddler who was in the way. The villain swears revenge on everyone he thinks helped kill his brother - and as bartender / detective Nick Stefanos helps the toddler's father through his grief, they both become agents in the race to prevent more bloodshed.

"Grasshopper"
by Barbara Vine
(Harmony).
Ruth Rendell writes as Barbara Vine when vacationing from her Inspector Wexford mysteries. Vine novels are sublime psychological suspense, less predictable and more textured than even the exemplary Wexford stories. Here, Clodagh Brown, a London electrician, slowly reveals two transformative events in her past. As a teenager, she developed a passion for climbing electrical towers, with tragic results. As a university student, she fell in with a group whose passion was traversing London's rooftops. What they saw in one building's window gives the book its impetus.

"The Hook"
by Donald E. Westlake
(Mysterious Press).
Novelist Bryce Proctorr has a million-dollar contract, but bitter divorce proceedings have seriously blocked him. Wayne Prentice has a good manuscript but can't find a publisher. Bryce suggests a swap: He'll publish Wayne's work under his name and they'll split the advance. The catch is: Bryce's shrewish wife has to go. After a desperate Wayne kills her, the writers eerily begin to change places, shadowing and doubling each other. "The Hook" can be seen as an homage to the late Patricia Highsmith ("The Talented Mr. Ripley") in its knowing nods to her "Strangers on a Train" and its cool amorality and clammy dread.