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Hawaii just after the war is an unspoiled paradise. Any mystery fan can tell you that won't last. Aloha! It's 1950, and the SS Lurline is steaming into Honolulu harbor. On board are Janice Cameron, coming to celebrate the novel she's written about Hawaii; a boatload of tourists eager to get their leis on; and a few people who are not what they seem. Watching them all-and missing nothing-is the beautiful and enigmatic Lily Wu. Like Janice, she's coming home: While they may have met in New York, they're both Hawaii girls of long standing. But while Janice may be surprised by the changes that the tourists (and their money) have brought to her beloved islands, very little surprises Lily. Which is lucky for Janice, as those surprises get ugly very fast.

Sarah Deane may be a newly minted college professor, but whether she's on the rocky coast of Maine or an elegant English estate, her real calling is as "the Nancy Drew of the 1980s" (Publishers Weekly). Everybody loves Dolly! At least, that's what Sarah Deane's sister says. But Sarah's siblings aren't so sure, and when Dolly turns up drowned, they ask Sarah to start asking questions. After all, in the finest cozy-mystery tradition, the police may not be up to the task. And while Sarah may be more PhD than PD, she has a well-known knack for nosing around and uncovering secrets like the ones that may have killed Dolly. Not long thereafter, Sarah is bamboozled into shepherding tiresome Aunt Julia around the great gardens of Europe. It helps that her old friend Ellen Trevino is the expert leading the tour, but when Ellen misses the plane, Sarah's oh-so-sensitive nose starts twitching. When you've solved as many murders as she has, you get a sense about these things, and before the group sits down to its first cream tea, Sarah's nose is jumping like it has springs attached.

Robert Forsythe, London's favorite gentleman sleuth, is called to determine which of 87 suspects is taking potshots at a rich old coot, and Fosythe's intrepid assistant finds herself in the middle of a locked-room murder mystery. You thought the quest for eternal life was a new preoccupation, the preserve of tech bros with too much money? Not so. It's the 1980s, and rich old dilettante Winslow Maxwell Penndragon is shooting for a century or more...but somebody else is shooting, and they're aiming at Maxwell. With heirs a-plenty, Winslow P. calls in Robert Forsythe, a London barrister with a nose for trouble and a reputation for discretion, to figure out who's got murder on the mind. Forsythe loves a good puzzle, but he does not love Winslow P.-and it would appear he's got company. As assistant to Forsythe and witness to his exploits, "Sandy" Sanderson surely knows that when you bring a group of celebrity strangers to a snowbound, isolated hotel, it rarely ends well. But Christmas in the countryside-it sounded so appealing! So when one of the guests fails to turn up for breakfast, it's terrible, of course, but for Sandy it's also ever-so-slightly familiar. She knows her Agatha Christie. And this is not her first rodeo.

Manhattan's art scene in the 1980s is full of backstabbers, but Miss Melville regards this as needlessly messy. She prefers to use a gun-and she uses it well, in this darkly funny series perfect for fans of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club. Life is full of surprises. Susan Melville, for example, was raised to marry well, but when the Melville millions went South, she turned to...let's call it freelance problem-solving in order to pay the rent. Bluntly? She became a hired killer. Surprise! And now, surprisingly, her little watercolors have found an audience. Miss Melville can join the world of museums and artistes, and bid adieu to the grubby realm of hitmen and...hitwomen. Hitpeople? A shining, law-abiding life will be hers, she is certain-until another artist drops dead, the police get the story wrong, and Miss Melville is forced, yet again, to step in and tidy things up.

It's tough to be a preacher's kid, and for Leo Stanhope it may be harder than for most. He was born Charlotte, and in the Reverend Pritchard's home-as in all of Victoria's England-there is little room for persons unwilling to know their place and stick to it. And things are about to get harder: There's a gentleman who knows the secret that could get Leo locked up for life, and this so-called gentleman is not above a spot of blackmail. There is a bright spot, though, in the form of two little kids who are teaching Leo's heart to open again, after a wretched year. In warming to them, he realizes how much more he has to learn. Leo knows how to be a man. Now he must learn to be a father.

In this, his third adventure, Professor Andrew Basnett takes a brief break from his usual stomping grounds in the Little English Village, opting to spend Christmas in a Small Australian City instead. He¿s visiting Tony, an old colleague with a newish wife, and he¿s barely had a post-flight snack before he¿s made aware of a cloud hanging over the marriage. Jan, Tony¿s bride, is widely believed to have bashed her first husband over the head, and though she was acquitted of the murder, Tony himself is starting to have uncomfortable second thoughts. Things don¿t get any more comfortable when, at a family dinner, one of the guests is done in, killed with a chunk of the same crystal that put paid to Jan¿s first husband. And Jan herself? She¿s disappeared. Only the Professor, it would seem, can banish the clouds of distrust and reveal the truth, clear as crystal.

Andrew Basnett may be retired from academia, but that doesn¿t seem to have stopped his former colleagues from dumping problems in his lap. This time around it¿s the peppery Constance Camm, whose neighbors keep disappearing. Miss Camm and her sister, Mollie, might be tempted to shrug things off, were it not for a frightening letter. ¿I know where you buried the body,¿ says the letter, but¿to which disappeared neighbor does the letter refer? And why was it sent to Mollie, who hasn¿t been burying anything? Spurred by a desire to help a friend (and—admit it!—by his own curiosity), Professor Basnett starts poking around. But his efforts uncover more than one village skeleton, and they may call up more than anyone has bargained for.

Sarah Deane is an English teacher by profession, but with these first two adventures she discovers that sleuthing—of the strictly amateur variety—may be where her truest passions lie.The first book takes Sarah, still a grad student at this point, out of her natural New England habitat and into the wilds of Texas, where her maybe-boyfriend is keen on a spot of birdwatching. But birds are not all that she spies through her binoculars, and so the adventures begin. In Down East, Sarah is glad to be back on home ground, but somebody, it appears, is not happy in any way at all, and Sarah is forced (and secretly thrilled) to put her newfound detecting skills to use again.

"Sixteen-year-old Mariah Ebinger's idyllic suburban life is upended by a man whose obsession reveals a tragedy in her past"--

Gracie Allen breaks the Philo Phormula in a number of ways. First is its title: this is the only book in the series to modify ¿Murder Case¿ with more than one word, much less with the name of a character. And then there¿s that character: Gracie Allen was a very real, much-loved comedienne in the 1930s, famous for her double act with George Burns, and in fact the plot revolves around her. Gracie¿s centrality is no accident: Van Dine wrote the story as a vehicle for Allen, and actually created the novel only after the film had come out. So do all these departures pay off? We¿d be lying if we said that Gracie hits every single mark, but Van Dine does a surprisingly entertaining job of translating Ms. Allen¿s delicious Ditzy Blonde persona to the page, and she makes a charming foil for Philös evergreen erudition.

Like The Gracie Allen Murder Case before it, Winter was first written as a screenplay, in this case a vehicle for the figure skater Sonja Henie. However, while Allen¿s scatterbrained persona made a charming foil for Philös stuffed-shirt pretensions, Ms. Henie provided no such inspiration. Van Dine did not live long enough to see her outed as a Nazi supporter, but her ice-princess act offered less for Philo to play against. It should be noted that Winter was published posthumously to close out the series, and though it went to press without Van Dine¿s usual repeated revisions, it is true vintage Philo—utterly distinctive in style and its own very genuine kind of pleasure.