This riveting series launch from bestseller Tracy (the Monkeewrench series) introduces LAPD Det. Maggie Nolan, as well as Sam Easton, an Army veteran who has recently returned from Aghanistan with PTSD. Sam bartends at Pearl Club, a haunt of Hollywood bigwigs, where fellow bartender Melody Traeger asks for his help after she's beaten up by her boyfriend, music promoter Ryan Gallagher. A day later, Gallagher is murdered, and Sam becomes a suspect. Maggie investigates, interviewing both Sam and Melody. When Sam's estranged wife, Yukiko, is also murdered, Sam again becomes a suspect. Maggie, whose brother was killed in Afghanistan, is reluctant to believe Sam is guilty of either crime. Meanwhile, Melody reports being targeted by a stalker. When evidence emerges that implicates Sam in Yukiko's murder, Melody helps him avoid arrest, and together they try to discover the stalker's identity. The suspense rises as the plot takes some unexpected twists and turns. Readers will want to see more of Maggie, a complicated woman determined to succeed in a profession dominated by men, and the troubled Sam, who does his best to do the right thing. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary. (Jan.)

As the serial killer dubbed the Monster of Miracle Mile is mutilating and murdering women in Los Angeles, army veteran Sam Easton is struggling with his own demons. The sole survivor of his unit, which was bombed in Afghanistan, he's left with a badly scarred face and nightmares that have led to his wife, Yukiko, moving out, leaving Sam to rely on on his psychiatrist and his coworker at the Pearl Club bar, Melody Traeger, for comfort and company. As Sam suffers hallucinations and blackouts, both he and Melody are seen as suspects by LAPD detectives in the murders of persons close to them. Meanwhile, Rolf Hesse, son of a famed filmmaker, is trying to pique Sam and Melody's interest in acting in his student film. P. J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P. J. and Traci Lambrecht, best-selling authors of the Monkeewrench gang series. Here, Tracy launches a new series that depends as much on strong character development as it does on crime-solving.

After 10 chronicles of the crime-solving adventures of the madcap partners in Minneapolis' Monkeewrench Software, Tracy shifts dramatically to focus on a spate of killings on Los Angeles' Miracle Mile. Stella Clary is the third woman to be gutted by a murderer who's shown no interest in molesting his victims sexually. Although LAPD homicide detectives Margaret Nolan and Al Crawford are under pressure to bring in the perp, they can't even figure out how he escapes the blood-drenched crime scenes without getting noticed. And things are about to get worse. The morning after event promoter Ryan Gallagher settles an argument with his girlfriend, Pearl Club waitress Melody Traeger, by punching her out, someone breaks into her apartment and leaves two dozen red roses behind. A peace offering, she thinks, but Ryan insists they weren't from him, and a day later he's dead too, leaving Melody both traumatized and thoroughly creeped out by the black Jeep she's convinced is stalking her. Sam Easton, the Pearl Club's barback, takes Melody under his wing even though he's got problems of his own, from extensive physical and mental scarring from a car bomb he was the only GI to survive to his haunting by Ronald Doerr, who served with him in Afghanistan, to his recent breakup with his wife, Yukiko, who's about to get killed herself and make Sam a prime suspect. Detective Remy Beaudreau, who wants to buy Nolan a drink and take her home with him, doesn't believe in coincidences, and brother, is he in the wrong book. Good LA atmosphere, people worth caring about, lots of corpses, and at least one killer too many. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Fellowes's The Mitford Trial, lady's maid Louisa Cannon is asked by a shadowy stranger to spy on Diana Mitford and her sister Unity, with someone ending up dead in the water when Louisa later accompanies the Mitfords on a cruise (75,000-copy first printing).