I should probably apologize for promoting John Sandford’s Prey novels, of which Field of Prey is the latest installment.

I mean, I always have to warn you about the language, which can be pretty coarse, and the psycho serial killers, who just get more and more creepy. In a way you could call these books horror novels (Psycho seems to be an inspiration for this one), and I don’t even like horror.

But… but I like the writing and the characters. Sandford deftly relieves the horror with episodes of mordant cop humor, and some dissing of political correctness.

And most importantly of all, he writes about Minnesota!

At one point in Field of Prey, Dr. Weather Davenport, wife of the hero, says, “TV. It’s like if you’re not on it, you don’t exist. The single most pernicious idea in our culture.”

I’m kind of like that with books. Those of you who live in Manhattan or LA or Chicago are used to seeing stories set in your home towns. But I’m a boy from Goodhue County, Minnesota, and Field of Prey is set precisely there, mostly. My home town isn’t mentioned (though I’m pretty sure Lucas Davenport drives through it at one point), but the story starts in Faribault, and then there’s Owatonna, and Red Wing, and Zumbrota, as well as a fictional town called Holbein.

My home area is in a bestselling book! We exist!

Also the book is pretty exciting, if you can put up with the rough elements.

I was alerted to this book by Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall, and you can read his review for a more detailed discussion.

The Marshal of the Borgo is an interesting book, a combination of modern mystery and supernatural novel. I suppose it would be called a work of “magical realism.” The mystical elements aren’t specifically Christian, although a Catholic bishop plays a positive role.

It’s about a policeman from Rome who was severely injured and reassigned to be the top cop in an Italian small town, or borgo. A foreign immigrant worker is found murdered in a field, and the cop, Matteo Scarpone, sets about investigating, stepping on some important local toes in the process. But he also meets a beautiful woman, who is unfortunately married.

What amazed me about The Marshal of the Borgo was that as I read it I was certain it was a translation from Italian. It had the perfect feel of a translation. But on finishing it I discovered the author is an American, and it was written in English. Which makes it a tour de force of literary tone.

Cautions for language and adult situations, and occult references.

And here we have another Bob Lee Swagger book from Stephen Hunter. I might be tempted to say it was another improbable Bob Lee Swagger book, except that a) I loved it, and b) it still fails to reach the heights of improbability achieved by The 47th Samurai, which I also loved.

So it’s like this. At the beginning of Sniper’s Honor, old Bob Lee is mooning around his Idaho ranch, at loose ends, bored. Then he gets a call from a woman reporter friend in Europe, who wants some technical advice on a story she’s researching – the mysterious disappearance of a female Russian sniper in World War II. This sniper, “Mili” Petrova, was renowned as much for her beauty as for her deadly efficiency with a rifle. Sent on a mission to assassinate an important German general, she disappeared from history.

Suddenly Bob Lee is energized with curiosity. He flies to Ukraine to help the reporter investigate, an action which causes them to run afoul of mysterious, powerful personages who want the dead past to stay dead. Soon Bob and his friend are running through the Carpathian Mountains, hunted, with no resources to rely on but Bob’s instincts and experience. And some remarkably good luck stage-managed by the author.

I’ll admit there’s a lot of manipulation in the plot. Author Hunter works pretty hard to arrange things in such a way as to believably manipulate the satisfying outcome we expect and get. Plausibility is pretty low.

But it’s a Bob Lee Swagger book and it’s fun. Educational too. Good enough for me.

Occasionally you run into a writer who approaches an old genre from a fresh angle. And occasionally you run into a writer who, though perhaps not a perfect stylist, knows how to create interesting, appealing characters and exciting stories that draw you in. It’s delightful when both those writers are the same person.

So it is with Brett Battles and his Jonathan Quinn novels, beginning with The Cleaner.

Jonathan Quinn (not, we are told, his real name) is not a spy. He’s not an assassin. He’s a Cleaner. Once the spies and assassins have done their jobs, Jonathan comes in and cleans up the mess. Blood gets washed off the walls, bullet holes get spackled, and bodies are disposed of. Jonathan is the best at his work. It pays very well, and he doesn’t have to risk his life… much.

But all that changes at the start of The Cleaner, when he goes to Colorado to examine the site of a fire where a man died. He finds a mysterious bracelet in the ashes, and when he goes back home to Los Angeles somebody tries to kill him. Attempting to find out why, he’s drawn into a confrontation with a world-wide conspiracy, and sets out on a journey that leads him to Ho Chi Minh City and Berlin, to a reunion with a woman from his past, and into a desperate attempt to save a kidnapped child.

This is the first in a series of Jonathan Quinn novels, all extremely readable as far as I’ve gotten. Credibility is a little weak – it’s hard to imagine a man of Jonathan’s humane character getting involved in a job like the one he holds (we’re told he was born in Warroad, Minnesota, and like all native Minnesotans he’s a prince among men). But the characters and relationships are vivid and interesting, and the dramatic tension never lets up.

Recommended. Cautions for language and mature themes, but fairly mild by contemporary standards.

Ed James’ novels on his police detective character Scott Cullen can’t help but be compared to a more famous series about an Edinburgh detective, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. And the books have some commonalities – gritty, urban crime settings, and tough, grim main characters. But James adds his own twists, and I found his stories pretty satisfying.

Scott Cullen is a new, inexperienced detective constable, but he’s still the smartest guy in the room – not because he’s a genius, but because his colleagues are generally pretty ineffectual – loafers and drunks (except for the female officers, who, in line with contemporary standards, are more or less exemplary one and all). Cullen’s worst trial is his superior, Inspector Bain, whose approach to any crime is to rush in, identify the most likely suspect, then turn all his (and his subordinates’) energy to building a case against that individual – even when there are other possibilities.

And yet… and yet, what I liked best about the books is that these characters, who could so easily have been caricatures, turn out to be more complex than they appear. Even Bain, when compelled to face the evidence, is capable of real police work, and even a measure of graciousness. Inconsistently, but now and then. In other words, he acts like a real human being. And Cullen has his own flaws, especially in his drinking and relationships with women.

I read the first two books in the Cullen series. Ghost in the Machine involves a missing person case which turns into a murder investigation, involving people who meet each other on a social networking site called “Schoolbook.” In Devil in the Detail Cullen and his colleagues are called out to a smaller town, where they investigate the disappearance of a mentally challenged girl. This story involves allegations of child abuse by a priest, but author James softens the possible offense but setting that abuse in a syncretist cult rather than a Christian church.

Well-written and tech-savvy, the Scott Cullen books are timely works in an old tradition. Cautions for language (the British police seem to have solved the problem of male language in female company by teaching the female officers to swear like the guys) and adult themes.