Welcome to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine!

Like most mystery readers I not only have favorite authors, I have favorite series characters as well. And while some of those favorite authors don't visit my favorite characters as often as I would I like, it becomes a great treat when they finally do.
That's the case with two of this month's authors: Laurie R. King and the late Donald Westlake . I am partial to Westlake's Dortmunder series and to King's marvelous creation in Mary Russell as companion and partner to Sherlock Holmes.
This month's third returning favorite is not a series per se, but rather the distinct literary persona adopted by Ruth Rendell when she writes as Barbara Vine, creating a wonderful series of dark suspense novels connected only by their psychological density and her vivid imagination.

Donald Westlake created the character of John Dortmunder in his 1970 book, The Hot Rock, and thirteen have appeared since. Get Real (Grand Central Publishing, $23.99) is the latest and perhaps the last—Westlake died last New Year's Eve. Earlier in Westlake's career, there were gaps of five to six years between Dortmunder's appearances, but happily, as Westlake had noted on his own Web site ( www.donaldwestlake.com ): "I seem to be spending more time with John Dortmunder than I used to . . ." Indeed, recently the typical wait was only two years between the complicated comic crime capers devised by the devious Dortmunder and his cronies.

Dortmunder is a professional crook and an ingenious planner who assembles teams of criminals to pull off complex but lucrative thefts. Needless to say, the more lucrative the crime, the greater the risk, and the more complex the caper, the greater likelihood that things will go wrong. How they go wrong and how adroitly Dortmunder manages to counter the fickle twists of fate provides great pleasure.

The fun begins almost immediately in Get Real when Stan Murch's cab-driving mother meets reality TV producer Doug Fairkeep. Murch is a getaway driver, and when Fairkeep deduces just what kind of driver Stan is, he seizes on the idea of a reality show that would follow real life criminals as they plan and carry out a crime. Obviously, that plot has drawbacks, particularly for the criminals filmed committing a crime.

From that seed a mighty con job grows as Dortmunder and his crew try to put together a crime that will at least ostensibly meet Fairkeep's needs and at the same time keep themselves clear of repercussions.

Reality TV is a rich field for Westlake to plow, and he doesn't disappoint as he skewers staff and cast. For instance, reality shows are cheap in part because they don't have scriptwriters. Instead, reality TV has production assistants who do not write scripts, they just make "suggestions." They don't get the credits or pay that script writers would command. As Fairkeep explains it to Marcy Waldorf: ". . . reality shows do not have actors and writers because they do not need actors and writers. If you were a writer, Marcy, you would have to be in the union, and you would cost us a whole lot more because of health insurance and a pension plan, which would make you too expensive for our budget . . ."

No one writes better or funnier caper novels than Donald Westlake, and Get Real is the latest testament to that fact.

Laurie R. King struck Edgar gold with her first novel, A Grave Talent, which introduced Kate Martinelli , then broke plenty of rules by launching a new series with her second novel instead of following up on the success of her debut. Her second book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, introduced Mary Russell , a fifteen-year-old girl who in 1915 meets the retired and reclusive Sherlock Holmes on his Sussex turf.

From their unlikely meeting sprang a friendship of kindred spirits despite their substantial age difference. That initial friendship has ripened over the course of nine novels into a partnership, and eventually into a marriage, as odd as that might sound to readers familiar only with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Most remarkable to me is that King has managed to make this implausible transformation of the misogynistic Holmes entirely credible—that is, she has maintained in large degree the essence of Doyle's creation.

In the intervening years the duo has traveled to Palestine ( O Jerusalem ), India ( The Game ), and to the United States ( Locked Rooms ), where Mary confronted mysteries about her own past. They've also made a notable return to Dartmoor, where Holmes once faced the Hound of the Baskervilles, in The Moor.

If there are Doyle fans who recoil at the idea of Holmes as a husband (and I'm sure there are), they will be further flummoxed by the events detailed in The Language of Bees (Bantam, $25) in which Holmes discovers that he is the father of a grown son, Damian Adler. Five years after Holmes first meets Damian, he shows up in Sussex Downs with a serious problem. His bohemian wife, Yolanda, and their young daughter have gone missing.

The search for the missing mother and child leads Holmes and Russell on a hunt conducted separately and together, aided by the always resourceful Mycroft Holmes. The quest will lead into the dark heart of a religious cult and ritual slaughters at some of England's most unusual prehistoric sites. King, as usual, keeps readers on edge as Russell and Holmes don disguises, make impressive deductions, and deal with dangerous foes.

The Birthday Present
by Barbara Vine (Ruth Bendell)

Writing as Barbara Vine , Ruth Rendell has produced a dozen suspense novels, including 1986's A Dark-Adapted Eye, which won an Edgar award, and, a year later, A Fatal Inversion, which won the coveted Gold Dagger award from the Crime Writer's Association in the U.K. Her thirteenth novel as Barbara Vine is as eerie and unsettling as any of its predecessors. The Birthday Present (Shaye Areheart Books, $25), with its deceptively simple premise and alternating narrators, reads like a nightmare where you know something terrible is going to happen, but it's impossible to predict how it's going to unfold or who is going to suffer most.

The story is narrated in straightforward fashion by Rob Delgado on one hand, and revealed elliptically in tantalizing passages from the diary of Jane Atherton. Together they describe the journey of Ivor Tesham, a member of parliament and a rising young star in the political firmament.

Tesham, Delgado's brother-in-law, decides to give his mistress, Hebe Furnal, an unusual surprise birthday present. The two enjoy so-called "adventure sex," involving role-playing games, and Tesham hires two men to "kidnap" Hebe off the street and bring her to the Delgados' house, which he had arranged to borrow for the assignation.

But the kidnapping ends in tragedy. Tesham's role in the whole affair isn't known at first—in fact the police believe that Hebe wasn't really the intended victim. But others know or suspect Tesham's involvement, including Delgado and Hebe's friend Jane Atherton, whom Hebe relied upon to provide an alibi when she left her husband and son to spend time with Tesham.

Tesham's attempts to avoid the repercussions of the tragedy and to preserve his political career seem, against the odds, to be successful and even take a bizarre upturn. With a plot full of twists that play out against a background of privilege and pride, and a bevy of characters seeking to gain from the tragedy, Barbara Vine's craft conjures a dark but satisfying entertainment.

Britten and Brülightly
by Hannah Berry

Hannah Berry 's gorgeous graphic novel, Britten and Brülightly (Henry Holt, $20) summons the spirit of noir with rich artistry and sharp plotting. In rain-soaked London, Fernández Britten is a talented Ecuadoran private investigator full of sorrow. He is tired of living up to his nickname, "The Heartbreaker," having spent years discovering romantic infidelities and devastating his clients. His only hope is to solve a case with a happy ending, and therefore earn his redemption. Britten's partner, Stewart Brülightly—a prurient being whose incarnation can only be called "unconventional"—urges him to assist a beautiful woman whose fiancé has allegedly committed suicide. Britten agrees, hoping to comfort her. But true to the genre, Berry constructs an intricate labyrinth of family secrets, brutal lies, and stunning revelations that take Britten far from the healing he wants.

Berry's masterful touch takes full advantage of the dramatic moments only graphic novels can evoke. A two-page spread showing Britten bent forward in a downpour induces as much full, suspenseful feeling as a tiny panel showing a baffled cat's shining eyes, and Britten's thoughts capture wise, pithy truths: "Absolute morality is a luxury for the short-sighted." At age twenty-five, Berry has accomplished a complex, visually stunning debut, and readers will look forward to what else her palette can provide.