The scenario is an old standard, and still works just fine. Sam Carlisle used to be a cop in the English Midlands, but after a traumatic loss he climbed into a bottle, quit the job, and moved north. Now he’s out of money and looking for work. A local real estate big shot observes him stopping a purse snatcher and offers him a job as his driver and bodyguard. When Sam asks him why he doesn’t hire one of the established security firms, his answer is evasive.

Still, Sam needs the job and he takes it. And that’s the beginning of A New Dawn Rising by Michael Joseph. Things go all right for Sam until his employer is killed in a fire, and it looks like arson, and the police target Sam as the perpetrator.

I liked A New Dawn Rising, mostly, except for one very large plot problem. There’s supposed to be a big surprise near the end, but it’s one that’s been used a thousand times before. It was obvious even to me, and I’m pretty easy to fool. I felt badly for the author, because all in all the book was a creditable attempt, with interesting, well-drawn characters and good dialogue.

You might enjoy it too, if you’re tolerant of plot chestnuts.

Duncan MacMaster is the proprieter of The Furious D Show, one of the most interesting movie blogs in operation. His focus is not movie art or movie personalities, but movie business. In other words, his focus is a particular brand of insanity. And that’s always entertaining.

He’s also written a novel which isn’t bad at all. Joe Average is a satire in the form of a superhero story.

Ken Burton is pretty much Superman, but less romantic. Overweight and physically unimpressive, he was nevertheless struck by a meteor as a teenager, and acquired incredible strength and the ability to fly (he lacks x-ray vision). The only person who knows his secret is his girlfriend Mina, who happens to be a brilliant scientist. She’s spent her life trying to figure out exactly what gave Ken his powers.

After hiding his light under a bushel for years, Ken as an adult begins to intervene in situations where people need rescuing and bad guys need stopping. Mina happily provides him a suitable costume (no tights, thank you) and a base of operations. Through a misunderstanding, his chosen superhero name, “The Avenger,” ends up as “Joe Average.”

All this does not escape the notice of powerful figures in government, who wish to hitch their political wagons to Joe’s popularity. And if he won’t play their game, they are more than willing to use innocent people to extort his cooperation, and even to attempt to produce their own custom-made superhero to displace him.

I enjoyed Joe Average very much. The sympathetic characters were appealing, and the political satire – at times – delicious. The weakness of the story is that more time is spent with the evil people than with the good guys, resulting in what I think of as That Hideous Strength Syndrome, named after one of my favorite novels, one which many people find hard to read because the time with the villains is so aggravating. Which is one of the points of the story, but it can make it hard going for long stretches.

Cautions for language and adult situations (the young lovers fall into bed as soon as they declare their feelings. Waiting for marriage isn’t something that comes up). All in all, pretty good, though. I liked it.

Benjamin Tucker is a true crime writer living in North Carolina. He’s the divorced father of a teenage daughter, and has recently been remarried, to a woman who is both beautiful and very rich. His new wife and he love each other – though they fight a lot – and he mostly lives in the guest house behind the mansion, just because it’s convenient for his work. He’s fond of his mother-in-law, an elegant alcoholic (sort of a mature Nora Charles, and her name is indeed Nora), and devoted to his goofy dachshund. The key to his personality is the teenage trauma of the murder of his girlfriend, of which he was briefly suspected. He spent some time in a mental hospital, overcoming the shock.

Now a serial killer has started murdering women in Ben’s town. Because Ben writes about these things, he gets involved with the investigation, and it soon becomes clear that the killer has fixated on him and his loved ones. All Ben’s brains and courage will be needed if he’s to protect the women he loves.

That’s the premise of Vengeance is Mine, by Harry James Krebs. It was an enjoyable novel, with engaging characters I learned to care about. Ben isn’t always prudent in his decisions, and I didn’t always approve of his moral choices. But he was relatively believable, and quite likeable.

I hope there will be more novels featuring him.

Cautions for the usual stuff.

Wall Street Journal columnist Mark Yost has written a really gritty detective story, Cooper’s Daughter. I’ve talked about Raymond Chandler’s rules of private detectives before in this space. Max Allan Collins has commented on this blog about his creation of a detective who would break those rules, but Mark Yost takes it further. His private eye, Rick Crane, who operates in upstate New York, extorts sexual favors from straying wives in return for his silence to the husbands who’ve paid him, and also acts as a collector for organized crime bosses.

But his life takes a turn when an old man asks him to investigate the beating death of his daughter, who had been dating a local minor league baseball star. His investigations cause him to step on important toes, and guys with heavy fists try to persuade him to stop poking into the matter. But he’s moved by his client’s grief, and seeks a kind of personal redemption in finishing the job.

The morals of this story are interesting. Rick commits adultery both recreationally and romantically, but also tells us he’s a regular churchgoer.

Rick Crane is an interesting and complex hard-boiled gumshoe, and I look forward to further stories about him. Cautions for adult themes and language.

I read a couple Elmore Leonard novels decades back and concluded that, although he was a good writer, I just didn’t like him. He knew his business, but he wasn’t a somebody whose company I enjoyed.

After I started watching the FX TV series “Justified,” based on his character Raylan Givens, US marshal, I decided to give him another try. I think the series is pretty good. I especially like the way “rednecks” are treated as actual human beings, with a range of IQs and wisdom levels. So I tried Leonard’s novel Raylan.

Consumer report: Nope. I still have the same reaction to Leonard that I had when I was younger. I can’t say precisely why he rubs me the wrong way, but he does. The same characters I enjoy on TV get on my nerves in this book.

Which is not saying it’s bad. It just doesn’t please my palate.

It’s about lawmen and drug dealers in Kentucky coal country. Some plot lines are discernible from the TV series, but in a much modified form. Cautions for adult themes and lots and lots of rough language.