Irish author named French makes strong debut

"In the Woods" (Viking, 429 pp., $24.95) is an auspicious debut from a young Irish writer, Tana French. The theater-trained French clearly knows a thing or two about drama.

A child is murdered at an archaeological dig near Dublin. Years before in those same woods, two children disappeared and a third was found with blood in his shoes and no memory of what happened. A homicide detective, Rob Ryan, finds a clue connecting the cases, and, desperate to stay on the investigation team, hides an explosive secret: as a kid, and with a different name, he was that boy in the woods.

The book's plot and pacing are rock-solid, but its tender characterizations — particularly the deepening relationship between Ryan and his brainy, tough female partner — are what set it apart. Strong stuff.

Best-selling Japanese writer Natsuo Kirino's first book published in English was the icily riveting "Out." Four female factory workers in Tokyo punish an abusive husband by chopping him into small, easily transportable pieces; the operation's success leads them to start a lucrative trade in the disposal of bodies.

Her second in English is "Grotesque" (Knopf, 480 pp., $24.95). This equally unsettling story is about the murder of two hedonistic prostitutes, told mostly by the dumpy, jealous older sister of one of them. Kirino's chilly vision of modern Japan is a long, long way from wistful cherry blossoms and pretty geishas.

Declan Hughes' "The Color of Blood" (Morrow, 341 pp., $24.95) is a classic hard-boiled detective story, adding an Irish twist to the archetypal Chandler/Macdonald style.

Dublin PI Ed Loy, who does not suffer fools gladly, is hired to find a wealthy dentist's daughter — even though the dentist and his estranged wife seem oddly unconcerned about their kid. The girl turns up, but Loy's work isn't done; he digs further, until he's up to his eyebrows in home-made porn, murder and the seamiest corners of a spectacularly dysfunctional family.

One distinctive motif in Donna Leon's subtle Venetian mysteries is that Leon's adopted home is, at heart, a small town — and therefore rife with jealousies and corruption, secret alliances and unexpected joy. Another distinctive motif is the author's concern over Venice's never-ending, heartbreaking social problems.

"Suffer the Little Children" (Atlantic, 320 pp., $24) richly embellishes these themes. An attack on a pediatrician who recently adopted a baby causes police commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a clandestine scheme to sell newborns. As always, Brunetti is highly attuned to (and sympathetic toward) the failings of the humans around him.

Since retiring from the CIA, Charles McCarry has quietly become an elegant, erudite and moving spy novelist, crafting what he calls "naturalistic novels about people who happened to be engaged in espionage."

"Christopher's Ghosts" (Overlook, 304 pp., $25) adds to McCarry's chronicle of Paul Christopher, the spy at the center of a sprawling, intergenerational saga. With this dazzling new book, another piece of the puzzle snaps cleverly into place.

Christopher is a teenager living in Germany before the war with his American father, a dreamy novelist, and German mother, a levelheaded patrician. The Nazis are turning everything upside-down — "a world," McCarry writes, "in which all the signposts had been taken down."

This terrifying atmosphere heightens the usual teenage ordeals, notably first love, to the level of grand opera for Christopher. When he witnesses a wicked crime, Christopher must wait years — until the Cold War makes him a spy — before he can take his revenge.

No space for details, but this month four wily masters of crime fiction offer proof that each is at the pinnacle of his game. Don't miss Elmore Leonard's "Up In Honey's Room" (Morrow, 292 pp., $25.95); Donald E. Westlake's "What's So Funny?" (Warner, 368 pp., $24.99); Michael Connelly's "The Overlook" (Little, Brown, 225 pp., $21.99); or Lee Child's "Bad Luck and Trouble" (Delacorte, 377 pp., $26).

Seattle writer Adam Woog's column on mystery and crime fiction appears once a month.