Private eye gets wise

Northwest writers and settings have a particularly strong showing this month:

Despite its playful title, "Walla Walla Suite (A Room With No View)" (Random House, 271 pp., $12.95 paper original) is not a comic romp; it's more acerbic than laugh-out-loud funny. Think Stephanie Plum with a dark edge and a thoughtful concern about the death penalty.

"Walla Walla Suite" is set in a vivid but slightly anachronistic Jet City, a situation charmingly explained in an afterword by author Anne Argula, a pseudonym for screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan ("Cinderella Liberty," "The Last Detail"), who lives here part time and part time in Sonoma. The book stars a tough-talking, soft-hearted cop-turned-private-eye named Quinn.

Here, she investigates the disappearance of a young secretary who worked in Quinn's Pioneer Square building. When some guy rather conveniently confesses to murder, the PI's BS antennae go up — she doesn't think he did it. Quinn's contacts through her sometime boss prove useful — he's a "mitigation investigator" who specializes in finding circumstances that can get convicted killers off death row.

Argula will sign "Walla Walla Suite" at noon Sept 26 at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St., Seattle; free (206-587-5737).

In a departure for Portlander Chelsea Cain, whose last book was a wry Nancy Drew parody, "Heartsick" (St.Martin's,336pp.,$23.95) is a blunt and thoroughly compelling Portland-set thriller. (Warning: Much of it is not for the faint of heart.)

Archie Sheridan is a cop who is the only surviving victim of a brainy, seductive torturer/killer, Gretchen Lowell. Even behind bars, Gretchen is still creepily obsessed with Archie. Meanwhile, he's a mess but still has the grit to chase another killer who's on the loose — and finds, in a gender twist on "Silence of the Lambs," that he needs Gretchen's insights.

Rick Mofina's swiftly paced "A Perfect Grave" (Pinnacle, $6.99 paper original) kicks off with the brutal murder of a beloved and seemingly perfect nun who works with the homeless in Pioneer Square. Crime reporter Jason Wade of the fictional Seattle Mirror investigates, sticking with the story even as he spars with a tyrannical boss.

Also on the case is SPD Detective Grace Garner, with whom Jason was once an item (and who broke with him for unknown reasons). Separately and together, they uncover a story of slow-simmering revenge that has implications for the reporter's family. Former crime reporter Mofina lives in Ottawa, but let's cut him some slack. He clearly loves Seattle and captures its spirit well.

Lisa Jackson, a prolific writer from Lake Oswego who specializes in romantic suspense, has two, count 'em, two new books out. "Sorceress" (Signet, 406 pp., $7.99 paper original) concerns a 13th-century Welsh woman on a quest to find jewels whose value she discerns in a dream. This conclusion to a trilogy is light on historical background but strong on mystical witch-and-warrior action.

"Almost Dead" (Zebra, 448 pp., $7.99 paper original) sets us in the present, as Cissy Cahill (first seen in Jackson's previous book, "If She Only Knew") struggles to understand why members of her San Francisco old-money family keep dying violently. At the same time, she's coming to grips with powerful feelings for her ex-husband: "Damn him with his open-collared shirt, thick, mussed hair, and dimples that creased when he smiled."

Non-Northwest But Worthwhile Department: There are no stylistic surprises in Dick Francis' "Dead Heat" (Putnam's, 352 pp., $25.95), but it's still delightful to see the old master at work. "Hocus Potus" (Melville House, 368 pp., $23.95) is an uneven but hilarious political satire set in Iraq, by someone who knows the score: Malcolm MacPherson, who covered the war for Time and Newsweek. And the wisecracking female amateur sleuth is (like many genre types) in danger of becoming a cliché, but Harley Jane Kozak's "Dead Ex" (Doubleday, 352 pp., $21.95) keeps things fresh, asking us: Who'd be cold enough to murder a terminally ill, well-liked producer of soap operas?

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