Peek inside the great detectives

If you're a mystery buff in search of fun, I'd bet my weekly lunch money that "The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives" would be just what you're looking for.

Brainchild of Otto Penzler, mystery anthologist and owner of New York's Mysterious Bookshop, "The Lineup" (Little Brown, 402 pages) is exactly what its hyperbolic but accurate subtitle says it is: a compendium of essays, stories and other miscellaneous pieces by top crime writers about their most popular fictional creations.

The pieces range from a fanciful "obituary" by Jeffrey Deaver for his veteran NYPD forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme to a C-SPAN-style self-interview by British writer Colin Dexter about his late, hugely lamented Oxford Inspector Morse of PBS "Mystery" fame. (Sample questions: "What sort of man was Morse?" and "Why did you kill off Morse?").

Best-seller Lee Child offers a very sensible and possibly ironic explanation for why his drifter/tough guy series hero Jack Reacher is a knight so errant you can't find him even with GPS and reveals that the movie "Shane" and Zane Grey's stories are influences.

Faye Kellerman discusses the importance of her Jewish faith and culture in the creation and development of her gumshoe Rina Lazarus (half a team with Peter Decker). "I met Rina before I met Peter because we had most in common. ... She said to me, 'I am Rina Lazarus, and I know you very well. Probably a lot better than you know me.'"

Others, but nowhere nearly all, collected by Penzler are Robert Parker's imagined cocktail conversation between his burley, wise-cracking Boston P.I. Spenser and girlfriend Susan about why Spenser would make such a great fictional character; a similar piece by Anne Perry where two people discuss the marriage of Perry's Victorian series heroes, Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, and Alexander McCall Smith's recollection of how a brief sojourn in Botswana led him to invent the beloved Precious Ramotswe and her No.1 Ladies Detective Agency.

And Harry Bosch is back

The pieces in "The Lineup" are, as I say, tremendous fun - clever, wide-ranging, revealing, even surprising. Bet you can't read just one.

As it happens, much-admired Michael Connelly also has a piece in "Lineup," an appealing appreciation of his complex, dour LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch. As one of those rare opportunities to have and eat cake simultaneously, Connelly is also out this month with a new Harry Bosch novel, "Nine Dragons" (Little, Brown, 374 pages).

Usually, the farthest Harry strays from LA is Vegas, but this time, after picking up a case involving the robbery/murder of a Chinese, South LA liquor store owner, events turn on him so much that he has to rush across the Pacific to Hong Kong on a dangerous, highly personal rescue mission. Seems the murdered store owner had been paying weekly protection money to a Chinese triad, a powerful, mafia-style crime organization with roots deep in Chinese history and now planted firmly in many U.S. Asian communities.

In possibly too much of a coincidence, Harry's 13-year-old daughter is living with her mother in Hong Kong. When the triad warns Harry off the case, he blows the gangster off until he receives a chilling video of the kidnapped youngster, promising dire consequences for her and him soon unless he lightens up on the investigation.

Harry's frantic mission to Hong Kong is equal parts beat-the-clock suspense and fascinating travelogue. It is also tough-guy loner Harry Bosch at his most vulnerable and poignant.

On a much lighter but relentlessly entertaining note, Peter Mayle ("A Year in Provence," "French Lessons") has concocted a shameless guilty-pleasure bonbon in "The Vintage Caper," (Knopf, 223 pages).

In a plot so formulaic someone might sue him for patent-infringement (I'm looking at you, Nicholas Sparks), Mayle starts his story with the heist of a Hollywood lawyer's multimillion-dollar wine collection. Because the lawyer's insurance company would be financially hard-pressed to pay the claim, it hires Sam Levitt, who just happens to be an ex-corporate lawyer, dedicated crime aficionado and (what are the odds?) wine connoisseur.

Before you can say Richard Gere, Levitt is on his way to Bordeaux and Provence, where he proceeds to meet with a comely French woman with similar tastes and ambitions, consume barge-loads of French food, drink and five-star hotel amenities, tangible and non-, and leisurely solve a case that is a tad more intriguing than it at first appears to be.

All this may sound like faint praise, but "The Vintage Caper" doesn't claim to be Stendhal, and it mirthfully lives up to what it doesn't claim to be.

Take a sip

As long as we're in the beverage aisle and on the cusp (some might say the brink) of the holiday season, you might want to take a look at "Holiday Grind," by Cleo Coyle (Berkeley/Prime Crime, 367 pages).

The latest in a sub-sub-sub-genre series of "Coffeehouse Mysteries" (previous titles include "On What Grounds" and "Murder Most Frothy"), "Holiday Grind" will be too cute by half for some, but just right for those who like the only thing shot in their whodunits to be espresso.

When series heroine Clare Cosi, manager and chief barista at Village Blend in New York, finds Alfred Glock, a seasonal customer who works nearby as a charity Santa murdered in a nearby alley, she's not convinced it's a random mugging. Trouble is, the New York cops do, and Clare's boyfriend, a NYPD detective, is busy with a case of his own.

So because she had become very fond of customer Glock -- and because this is a mystery novel -- Clare strikes off on her own to solve the crime - which she eventually does, with a savory blend of gumption and wit. I'm ready for a refill.

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