A missing laptop, a treasure map and two bizarre murders await in this month's Whodunit column.

Bryant & May: Oranges and Lemons

Author Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit investigates exactly what you'd expect: cases that are far from your everyday, humdrum homicide. But as Bryant & May: Oranges and Lemons—the latest entry in the popular series—opens, it appears that the unit will close up shop, having fallen victim to budgetary cuts and some remarkably public blunders. The chief will tend his garden on the Isle of Wight, while one detective chief inspector is barely clinging to life in the hospital and the other has dropped off the radar completely. But then the Speaker of the House of Commons (the U.K. analog of Nancy Pelosi) is nearly killed by a falling crate of oranges and lemons. This would have been written off as an accident, save for the fact that it took place within spitting distance of the Church of St. Clement's, of nursery rhyme fame ("Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's"). Thus, the incident appears to fall directly within the purview of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, which is quickly confirmed by more nursery rhyme-themed crimes. As is the case with other books in the series, the setup is improbable (bordering on bizarre), the characters droll, the prose exceptionally clever and often hilarious and the "aha" moment deliciously unexpected.

The Butterfly House

Scandinavian mystery novels enjoy such constant appreciation from suspense fans worldwide that they've become an established subgenre unto themselves, with no signs of flagging. Danish writer Katrine Engberg hit the scene in 2020 with her critically acclaimed bestseller, The Tenant, and as 2021 opens, she returns with The Butterfly House. The Copenhagen police are summoned to a rather macabre display: A young woman has been found in a fountain, her body completely exsanguinated. It is clearly a murder, which is bad enough in its own right, but when another body is found the following day, also drained of blood, also in a fountain, it becomes starkly clear that a serial killer is at large. The case falls to Investigator Jeppe Kørner, one of the two protagonists of The Tenant. The other, Kørner's partner Anette Werner, is on maternity leave at the moment, but that won't stop her from taking part in the investigation. Engberg has crafted a fine police procedural. She is an author to look out for, one who will be cited years hence as a key player in Nordic noir.

Picnic in the Ruins

Picture a Tony Hillerman-style tableau: a red rock desert beneath a deep azure sky, imbued with the history of the sacred rituals and artifacts of the Southern Paiute. Now add a Tim Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen-esque overlay, awash in desiccated Ford pickup trucks, characters who embody the word "characters," ulterior motives and belly-rumbling hilarity, and you'll get an idea of the strange trip you're about to embark on in Todd Robert Petersen's Picnic in the Ruins. We open with a bungled burglary that would have been screamingly funny for its ineptitude if not for its deadly outcome. Now the perps are on the lam, treasure map in hand, with the really bad guys—the smarter criminals—in hot pursuit. Other assorted protagonists include an anthropology Ph.D. candidate banished to the wilds of Utah, a somewhat shady government dude, a German tourist on some sort of personal quest (Old West folklore is huge in Europe) and a cast of off-the-grid "desert rats" who add big yucks at every turn. Beneath all this, Petersen poses some intellectual questions, such as who really "owns" land, what rights and responsibilities such ownership conveys and how the inevitable collisions between titled owners, the public good and the ancient claims of sacred ground should be addressed.

★ Someone to Watch Over Me

Reboots of major suspense series after the death of the author have been a mixed bag at best; witness, for example, the hit-and-miss follow-ups to Ian Fleming's books featuring MI6 superspy James Bond. But some series nail the reboot from the get-go, and Ace Atkins' continuation of Robert B. Parker's franchise featuring mononymous Beantown private investigator Spenser and his lethal sidekick, Hawk, falls firmly into the latter category. Someone to Watch Over Me finds the ace sleuth conscripted into retrieving a laptop from an exclusive Boston men's club. Spens er's client is his own young protege, Mattie Sullivan, who is building an investigation business of her own. Mattie has correctly surmised that her boss will carry a great deal more authority in demanding the return of the computer amid the club's misogynistic all-male milieu. But as often happens in mystery novels, a seemingly simple initial task explodes into something exponentially more complicated, here threatening to link a loosely knit cabal of high-ranking socialites and politicians to a human trafficking organization operating offshore in a remote and private Bahamian island. Needless to say, these people will stop at nothing to save their reputations and their livelihoods, and it will take all of Spenser's considerable talents to stay one step ahead.

In this latest from AWP Intro/Utah Arts-winning author Petersen, following It Needs To Look Like We Tried, ambitious grad student Sophia Shepard is studying the impact of tourism on key cultural sites along the Utah/Arizona border when she gets entangled with two minor crooks tasked with stealing a map from a local whose pothunting disrupts efforts to conserve Indigenous art and life. An edgy black comedy examining crucial issues of appropriation and antiquities theft in America.

Petersen's tightly written mystery plays out over the vast, unforgiving terrain on the Utah-Arizona border with a lineup of unforgettable characters. While studying the ethics of preserving ancient artifacts, doctoral student Sophia Shepard crosses paths with self-taught collector Bruce Cluff. He regrets removing so many relics over the years and starts working from his hand-drawn maps and detailed notebook to return the ancient objects to their original sacred locations. The hapless Ashdown brothers, Lonnie and Byron, are hired by an energy company CEO looking for oil lease opportunities on national monument land to steal Cluff's maps and storehouse of rare Native American pots, stone tools, and weapons. But their clumsy efforts turn deadly, and the trail of destruction they wreak across federal lands with the CEO's fixer, Scissors, draws the attention of the local sheriff and the FBI. Add to the mix a German tourist who has left the Ranches, Relics, and Ruins tour on a quest for the "real" American West and an unethical journalist who repeatedly gums up the works, and the result is a frantic race to obtain the relics for good or bad. VERDICT Award winner Petersen (It Needs To Look Like We Tried; Long After Dark) delivers a fast-paced chase over a hostile landscape while underscoring the past and present threats to Native American antiquities. Hang on tight and enjoy the ride.—Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Petersen (It Needs to Look Like We Tried) serves up a rollicking mystery full of heroes, mystics, petty criminals, and evil capitalists on the border of Utah and Arizona. After the shadowy Kristine Frangos hires the local Ashdown brothers to steal some maps of ancient sites from amateur collector Bruce Cluff, Bruce and one of the maps go missing. Meanwhile, anthropologist Sophia Shepard and park ranger Paul Thrift are exploring ancient Pauite sites—Sophia for research, Paul for an ulterior motive involving a pilfered artifact. Thrown together with a German tourist on a mystical hero's quest, and helped by a reclusive savant called Dreamweaver, Sophia and Paul must outsmart an assassin hired by Frangos—who wants to pillage the sacred desert for minerals and more—to clean up the mess made by the Ashdowns. While a few too many coincidences pile on in the last pages, Peterson keeps up plenty of action and suspense while also offering philosophical insights on who owns the land. Petersen's offbeat adventure keeps the reader turning the pages. (Jan.)