“It’s so beautiful,” she said, peering out at the valley.

“Yeah, Idaho is a beautiful state. But Blight County itself is a corrupt little place.”

“Corrupt?”

“Only in the good sense. Most of the politicians can be bought, but they don’t charge much. Even the poor can afford a politician or two. It’s very democratic that way.”

People have been telling me for years I have to read some Patrick F. McManus, and I see now what they mean. Judging by The Blight Way, the first book in the series, McManus’ Sheriff Bo Tully is a welcome departure in the world of mysteries and police procedurals. Here’s a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

When Sheriff Bo is called out to view a dead body, hanging over a ranch fence and dead of a couple of bullet wounds, his first suspicion is against the outlaw Scragg family, on whose land the corpse was found. But why would they call the police on their own murder? Shortly thereafter, a shot-up Jeep is discovered not far away, with three dead bodies in it. Bo’s going to find out what happened, and he’ll do it the Blight County way, which means a lot of cunning and a minimum of pesky legalities. He has his crotchety old father, a former sheriff himself, to help out, and there’s a pretty new medical examiner for him to romance – he’s already romanced most of the single women in the county, without a lot of success.

The Blight Way is refreshingly free of some character elements I’ve gotten tired of (as I’ve told you more than once) recently in mystery stories. Bo Tully is a widower, having lost a wife he loved deeply. He was raised by a single mother, and never even knew who his father was until he was nine. That could be the background for one of those grim, damaged detectives we see so often in contemporary mysteries. But Bo is optimistic and self-confident. He has a good time dating, even if he strikes out a lot, and he has an amusing, cross-talk relationship with “Pap,” his reprobate old man. He’s surrounded by a colorful cast of citizens, most of them more or less involved in criminality, and he generally enjoys riding herd on them. Most of them don’t hold grudges, on either side.

The Blight Way was a fun read. Mild cautions for the usual things, but I don’t think many of you will be much offended by anything here.

That Stuart Neville has produced a moving, arresting, and troubling novel in The Ghosts of Belfast is notable. That this was his debut novel is amazing. Any number of writers would be happy to produce a work of this quality at the end of a long career.

Gerry Fegan is a former IRA hit man, legendary in his home city of Belfast. Since the Troubles died down, he’s been living a quiet life, drawing a salary (of which he spends little) for a government job which involves no duties. He actually spends most of his time drinking, because he needs to be drunk to sleep. His constant companions are twelve ghosts – people he murdered whose voices scream in his head. At last he realizes that they want something from him – they want him to kill the men who ordered their murders, as well as a couple of his accomplices. So he begins that business. The chapters in The Ghosts of Belfast are numbered in reverse, starting with Twelve, counting down as he carries out the ghosts’ commands and they vanish, one by one or in small groups.

At the funeral of his first victim he meets the victim’s sister, a pariah among the Irish Republicans because she married a Protestant, who has since abandoned her and her daughter. Gerry becomes their protector, gradually opening his heart as he touches, for the first time since childhood, the normal relationships of decent people. But his presence puts them in greater danger, and finally they all have to go on the run. Can Gerry protect them while finishing his mission? Should he finish it at all?

The Ghosts of Belfast is more than a thriller, it’s an examination of the complicated tissue of alliances, betrayals, and self-interests that make Northern Irish society and politics so complicated, cynical, and dangerous. It’s worth noting that a professional killer carrying out a vendetta is the most admirable male character in the book. Yet there’s sweetness here too, a sensitive appreciation of life and goodness made more vivid by contrast.

Christianity doesn’t come off very well, if I understand what I read correctly, though there’s no polemicizing against it. At one point Gerry specifically rejects the idea that he needs forgiveness, thinking rather that he needs “something else,” which the reader is left to guess.

I found The Ghosts of Belfast utterly engrossing and deeply moving. Recommended for those who can handle strong meat. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

He rattled his ice. “The death of friends, or death of every brilliant eye that made a catch in the breath.”

“Yours?”

“Yeats. I came across it in a book the other day while I was looking for something else, you know the way you do. Can’t get rid of it.”

“What’s it mean?”

“The lights are blinking out, buddy. Every night there are a few less than there were the night before.” He set down the glass sharply. “Let’s go out in the sun.”

I tend to think of Loren D. Estleman as one of the new kids in the detective novel biz, because that’s what he was when I first started reading him. But in fact he’s an old veteran now, a solid purveyor who unashamedly works Raymond Chandler’s old corner, instead of trying to put out big, thick thrillers about government conspiracies like so many others in the genre. He gives honest value for the reader’s money, and I relish his books. Among those, Every Brilliant Eye is (in my opinion) one of the strongest. It’s not a new book – it goes back to the 1980s, yet it felt fresh to me.

Amos Walker of Detroit, Estleman’s series detective, gets a call to go and collect his old friend and army buddy Barry Stackpole, who’s fallen off the wagon, out of a “blind pig” bar in a bad part of town. Barry is Detroit’s top crime reporter. The bar gets raided before Amos can extricate Barry, but he manages to sneak them both out (by punching a cop). The next time Amos sees Barry, he’s dried out again, but then Barry disappears completely. The newspaper’s lawyer hires Amos to look for him, because he has a date to testify before a grand jury.

Searching for his friend, poking into his affairs, Amos finds evidence that Barry had been writing a book about their time in Vietnam, and he comes to believe that Barry is dead, and that he’s dead because he was uncovering an old crime from the war. There’s police and civic corruption (business as usual in Detroit) involved, and Amos finds himself set up for a fatal accident, among other threats.

There’s real pleasure to be had in plain, old-school mystery writing, and I enjoyed Every Brilliant Eye immensely. Recommended. Cautions for language, violence and adult themes (including the hero committing adultery).

English writers are well known for mysteries, but not (so far as I’ve noticed) much for hard-boiled mysteries. English private detectives tend to the very cerebral, like Sherlock Holmes, or the very domestic, like Miss Marple. If novelists want to write gritty crime stories, they’ve traditionally chosen police procedurals.

But Keith Dixon has broken ranks. In the novel Altered Life he introduces private eye Sam Dyke (one assumes the name’s a tip of the fedora to Dashiel Hammet), a two-fisted shamus who works the mean streets of Manchester (and they’re plenty mean).

As the novel begins he’s meeting with Rory Brand, who runs a high end consultancy service that’s branching out into software development. Rory believes somebody’s plotting to ruin him, and he wants Sam to investigate. Sam says no thanks. The job calls for skills he doesn’t possess. Anyway, he doesn’t like Rory much.

The next day Rory is dead, his neck broken. And when Sam (rather guiltily) attends the funeral, he meets someone important from his own past. One of Rory’s subordinates hires him to investigate the murder, and there’s a kidnapping, and things get dangerous.

The prose is good, and I had only a few nitpicks about word choice. Although there’s one sour comment about Margaret Thatcher, there’s also a positive view of the business world that frankly surprised me in an English book. Sam Dyke is as tough a detective as you could ask for. All to the good.

On the negative side, I found him kind of dull. I know it’s a trope to make a hard-boiled gumshoe a wisecrack artist, but that serves a purpose, like the fools in Shakespeare’s tragedies. It prevents things from getting too dark, and keeps the detective from being a bore. Although Sam has a couple moments of cleverness, all in all he’s a dour fellow, and I got a little tired of him.

Also, in the final showdown, I thought he was just foolhardy, walking unprepared into a situation he knew he couldn’t control, leaving his fate to dumb luck.

Nevertheless, I thought Altered Life a commendable debut, and I might just read another Sam Dyke story.

Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.