MYSTERY

Red Cat

By Peter Spiegelman. Knopf, $22.95

Novels about New York private investigators always seem to have a too-hip-to-be-happy tone, and Spiegelman's John Marsh mysteries are no exception. But Spiegelman earns our attention with the swift plot and excellent dialogue in this third in the series. Marsh takes a case for his unpleasant brother David, a successful Wall Street type entangled in an Internet sexual liaison turned sour. Murder makes things even uglier, and Marsh tangles with the day-trading world as well as the NYPD as he hunts for the secret at the center of the case.

Final word: Read Spiegelman's first two books (Black Maps, which won the Shamus for best first novel in 2004, and Death's Little Helpers) for more mysteries set among Manhattan's Wall Street elite.

Jane Dickinson

THRILLER

The Black Sun

By James Twining. Harper Collins, $24.95

When British Intelligence asks recovering art thief Tom Kirk for help in solving a worldwide epidemic of bizarre crimes, Kirk is uninterested until he learns that an old enemy may be behind them. As Kirk and his former fence Archie start looking into the strange crimes - including the theft of a murdered man's forearm - it becomes clear that the group of killers has roots in Nazi Germany. Clues stretch from Idaho to Russia and include many of the deeper mysteries to surface from World War II.

Final word: There will always be an interest in Nazi Germany and the disappearance of looted treasures in the last days of WWII. Twining crafts a tale worthy of that epoch.

Peter Mergendahl

CHILDREN

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story

By Ellen Levine; illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Scholastic Press,$16.99, ages 4 to 8

Once in a while, a picture book comes along that makes history so real that it not only pulls children in but pulls at their hearts. Levine's biography of Henry "Box" Brown, the slave who mailed himself to freedom in a wooden crate, is such a story. With simple, vivid prose, Levine conveys the torment of slavery and why it drove Brown to risk his life to escape through the Underground Railroad. At the start of the book, Brown is a little boy in his mother's arms; his mother looks out at leaves being blown off trees and compares them to slave children being torn from their parents. When Henry in later life realizes that his wife and children may be sold, Nelson shows his pained face so up close that the sorrow is hard to take.

Final word: Levine's book gives children a wonderful gift, that of empathy for people who endured a terrible injustice long ago.

Jennifer Miller

SCIENCE FICTION

Deep Storm

By Lincoln Child. Doubleday, $24.95

Dr. Peter Crane has left the Navy after specializing in unusual afflictions common on nuclear submarines. Now he's been recalled to assist in problems in a top-secret deep-sea operation below an oil rig in the North Atlantic. The cover story is that the installation has discovered ancient Atlantis. The reality is that extraterrestrials have left an artifact beneath a thin layer of the Earth's crust, and rushed workers have developed strange physical and psychological maladies. Crane may be the only one who can save them and, possibly, the world - even the solar system.

Final word: Child combines the page-turning action of a thriller with science-fiction tropes that would be at home in stories by Hugo Award winners Robert Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson. The fast-paced result should appeal to fans of both genres.

Mark Graham