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One of the best new imprints to come along in the past decade is Hard Case Crime, devoted to celebrating the paperback originals of the 1950s and after. With new cover art by the great artists of the period and others in the tradition, Hard Case volumes would be right at home on those once-ubiquitous revolving paperback racks in appearance as well as content. Offerings have included reprints, original books by contemporaries, and newly discovered works of past writers like David Dodge and Roger Zelazny. Now editor Charles Ardai offers an unpublished novel by one of the supreme pulp magazine storytellers; a new book by one of the best and most prolific and versatile crime writers currently practicing; and the second novel by an immensely talented newer writer.

*** Lester Dent: Honey in His Mouth, Hard Case Crime, $7.99. I can't imagine why this gem of a thriller, written in 1956, three years before his death, by the author best known for Doc Savage, never saw print until now. The basic situation is not that original: a small-time photographer is recruited to impersonate a Latin American dictator who is his virtual double. The plot, though, is a twisting marvel, the pace fast, and the writing crisp, populated by dangerous women and quirky villains.

*** Max Allan Collins: Quarry in the Middle, Hard Case Crime, $7.99. The publisher has already brought out The First Quarry and The Last Quarry, in terms not of publication order but of the chronology of the character's life. In this most welcome 1980s flashback, Quarry is practicing a new variation on his murder-for-hire profession: He plans to take out the killers contracted to eliminate an Illinois casino operator and collect from the grateful victim. Complications ensue, and he winds up acting as a detective as well as a criminal. Neat plot, fine style, fast reading.

*** Russell Atwood: Losers Live Longer, Hard Case Crime, $6.99. Ten years after his first appearance, less than busy New York private eye Payton Sherwood looks into the death of legendary octogenarian shamus George "Owl" Rowell, who died in a hit-and-run on his way to ask Sherwood for help on a case. Atwood has fun with genre conventions (smartass dialogue and blows to the head included), does a great job with the Manhattan background, and delivers an ironic and darkly funny denouement. Robert McGinnis, arguably the greatest paper- back artist of them all, provides the sexy cover.

**** Michael Connelly: Nine Dragons, Little, Brown, $27.99. Harry Bosch's investigation of the murder of a liquor store owner spirals into a case involving the Chinese triads and a threat to the L.A. cop's 13-year-old daughter, now living in Hong Kong with ex-wife Eleanor Wish. Solid police procedure, vivid looks at two very different cities, and a superbly managed sequence of finishing surprises make this one of the best in a distinguished series.

** Sam Stall: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Interactive Mystery, Quirk, $24.95. The publisher's annual dossier mystery moves from past years' Victorian milieu of Doyle and Stoker to TV and contemporary Las Vegas. If the results are not quite as impressive, there's some interesting detective work here, fair play clues included, and (as before) some sly humor inserted in the bagged evidence, beginning with a bloodstained haiku anthology.

** Chelsea Cain: Evil at Heart, Minotaur, $24.99. In a gender-bending variation on Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter series that both deplores and capitalizes on society's sick fascination with serial killers, the love/hate duel continues between prolific Beauty Killer Gretchen Lowell, who inspires fan clubs and lookalike contests, and spleen-deprived Portland cop Archie Sheridan, who as the novel opens resides in a mental institution. I stuck with this one to the end, despite an unpleasant premise hardly worth one novel, let alone a sequence of three and counting, because of the author's undeniable narrative talent, which could be deployed on a more worthwhile project. Carolyn McCormick reads the audio version efficiently (Macmillan Audio, $39.95).

Ken Bruen's London Boulevard (Minotaur, $24.95) is ostensibly the first American edition of this very enjoyable 2001 variant on Sunset Boulevard, but its British edition was distributed in this country by Dufour and reviewed in this space in September 2002.

Of a spate of new graphic novels received, my favorite was a juvenile, Richard Salas's Cat Burglar Black (First Second, $16.99), in which teenage orphan Katherine Westree comes to the Bellsong Academy for Girls. A variety of creepy faculty send her and the other three students in residence on a dangerous assignment: burgling from three different houses portraits of the school's founder that hold the key to a hidden treasure. The story is nicely constructed and paced, the watercolor panels appropriately old-fashioned. Though the main mystery is solved satisfactorily, open questions remain for later entries in the series. Two adult titles combine mystery and supernatural horror. I wasn't overwhelmed by Werther Dell'edera's art for Ian Rankin's Dark Entries (Vertigo, $19.95), but the case for paranormal sleuth John Constantine does include some pointed satire of the reality-show phenomenon. Jason Starr's The Chill (Vertigo, $19.95), with art by Mick Bertilorenzi, concerning a shape-changing Irish serial killer stalking New York, is undoubtedly well-drawn and professionally written, but not my cup of blood. Admittedly, the merits of graphic novels often escape me.

Among the recent Rue Morgue Press offerings are (at $14.95 each) Stuart Palmer's complexly plotted Hildegarde Withers outing The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933), which makes the most of its Catalina Island locale; Nicholas Blake's second Nigel Strangeways novel, Thou Shell of Death (1936), about the predicted murder on Boxing Day of a World War I flying ace; and two of Catherine Aird's early Inspector C.D. Sloan mysteries, A Late Phoenix (1970) and His Burial Too (1973).

Two trade paperback reprints deserve special note. That Carolyn Wall's 2008 debut Sweeping Up Glass (Delta, $14), a Kentucky-based 1930s historical mystery of sufficient literary merit to be compared with Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, and other greats of Southern literature, was not snapped up by a major New York publisher is a sad commentary on the current scene—and its introduction to the world by the admirable Poisoned Pen Press is to be applauded. The out-of-print hardcover is offered on Amazon at $99.50 and up. The reprint has a new essay on the writing of the book, plus discussion questions for book clubs. . . . P.D. James's 2008 novel The Private Patient (Vintage, $15) is widely assumed to be the final Adam Dalgliesh novel. If it is, the octogenarian author goes out on a high note, paying tribute to her formalist roots not only in the creation of an excellent closed-circle fair-play whodunit but in several references to the last novel of a Golden Age classicist: Cyril Hare's Untimely Death (1958; British title He Should Have Died Hereafter).

Most unusual feature of the bargain hardcover anthology Detective Stories (Everyman's Pocket Classics/Knopf, $15), edited by Peter Washington, is reverse chronological arrangement, its selection of sixteen beginning with Paretsky and ending with Poe. There's no editorial commentary but an unexceptionable list of contributors: Rankin, Rendell, Keating, Simenon, Borges, Chandler, Hammett, Christie, Glaspell, Chesterton, Doyle, Harte, and a lesser known wild card: James McLevy.