books

"Elysiana" by Chris Knopf (The Permanent Press, 304 pages. $28)

If "Elysiana" had a soundtrack, it would be Dylan, the Dead and the Stones. If the novel had a guru, it'd be Vonnegut. Set in the summer of 1969 on an island off the Jersey shore, Knopf's curious and distinctive characters are adrift, trying to make sense of their lives in a world that doesn't make much sense anymore. Gwendalynn is "a hippie chick" who's "several days from her last recollected moments of sobriety." Jack Halcyon is a philosopher of sorts, and, like Zeus on Mount Olympus, looks down on the island from the top floor of an abandoned hotel. Norman Harlan, a politician, hopes Nixon's election will reset the universe and release him from his battle with Avery Volpe, the formidable leader of the beach patrol. When Harlan and his cronies attempt a takeover of the island's drug distribution, everyone gets pulled into the fray. It's possible to read this layered genre-bending novel as a retelling of Greek myth, or as an allegory for contemporary America, but most of all it's a groovy read.

"THE MESSENGER OF ATHENS" BY ANNE ZOUROUDI (LITTLE, BROWN, 324 PAGES, $23.99)

Set on an isolated Greek island, this elegant mystery has the hallmarks of a classic Greek tragedy. When Irini challenges her destiny as a fisherman's wife, the consequences are inescapable -- and dire. The novel opens with Irini's battered body being airlifted from the bottom of a cliff. The narrative then cuts between Irini's fall from grace and the investigation into who pushed her. The detective, Hermes Diaktoros, is an eccentric investigator with a sharp intellect and a voracious appetite for the truth -- as well as custard slices "heavily dusted with sugar and cinnamon." This Greek Hercule Poirot becomes the messenger from the gods (part of the mystery is who sent him to the island from Athens). He follows a trail laced with lust and lies uncovering the island's underworld to find who is responsible for her death. The irony, of course, is how a place of such beauty could be filled with such ugliness.

"MR. PEANUT" BY ADAM ROSS (KNOPF, 335 PAGES, $25.95)

Marry the macabre sensibility of Patricia Highsmith's "The Blunderer" with the subject matter of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and you get this, er, salty debut. David Pepin has Walter Mitty-like fantasies about killing his wife. When she's found dead from anaphylactic shock (she has -- wait for it -- a peanut allergy), Pepin is a prime suspect. The Pepins were "like most married couples" and perpetuated "their relationship through games of low-grade deception." Every marriage in this novel is examined through this distorted lens, including the marriages of both detectives on the case. There may be a fine line between love and hate, but it's the choice between physical or psychological violence "during a moment of terrible privacy" that separates marriage and murder.

"THE HANGING TREE" BY BRYAN GRULEY (TOUCHSTONE, 314 PAGES, $15)

Skim the first six or so pages of Gruley's sequel to his distinctive debut, "Starvation Lake," until you get to the line, "They found her hanging in the shoe tree at the edge of town." It's a sentence tinged with mystery and tainted with melancholy and it should have opened the novel. The woman hanging from the tree turns out to be small-town journalist Gus Carpenter's cousin. Gracie McBride's death sends Carpenter on an investigation that eventually crumbles the façades many in Starvation Lake have built to protect themselves and their loved ones. Carpenter's struggle to remain a journalist with dignity and a half-decent paycheck continues to be one of the most engaging aspects of this series. The other is the hockey. That game of "savage grace" is, once again, integral to Gruley's story. In the end, this novel is as much about the struggles of a profession and the angst of a man as it is about the woman in the hanging tree.

"BODY WORK" BY SARA PARETSKY (PUTNAM, 443 PAGES, $26.95, AVAILABLE AUG. 31)

A new V.I. Warshawski novel is always cause for celebration in my house, which is why I didn't mind that it's the sheer force of Warshawski's character that drives this overly complicated plot. Midpoint in the investigation Warshawski even admits the story "was too complicated ... to follow without a chart." No matter. Paretsky's the queen of the hard-boiled for good reasons. Her characters are ordinary people. Her dialogue is pitch-perfect. A young woman is shot outside a Chicago club and dies in Warshawski's arms. The suspects are a performance artist with as many lesbian lovers as she has identities, a deeply religious Hispanic family reeling from the death of two daughters, an Iraqi war vet with post-traumatic stress, his drinking buddies, his divorced parents, their neighbors, Eastern European goons, South Side gangbangers, drug dealers and a private defense security firm. The story revolves around bullies -- personal, sexual and corporate ones -- and Warshawski is smart enough to know bullies can be beaten. Paretsky will be signing at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls., at 7 p.m. Sept. 2.

"BAD BLOOD" BY JOHN SANDFORD (PUTNAM, 400 PAGES, $27.95, AVAILABLE SEPT. 21)

"Bad Blood" is Sandford's 30th novel and his fourth featuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's Virgil Flowers (does Sandford sleep?). Flowers is fast becoming one of my favorite series characters, especially now that Spenser's gone. "That effing Flowers" is smart, sexy and has a wicked sense of humor. And therein lies the problem I had with this book. There's a jarring disconnect between the light, irreverent tone that Virgil's character sets and the terrible evil at the dark heart of the plot. A 100-year-old religious sect fronting a child sex slave ring in rural Minnesota is nothing to throw so many double-entendres at. But, oh man, Sandford does know how to pace a thriller. In the end I was turning pages so fast, I got paper cuts. Sandford will be at Barnes & Noble, 801 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., at 12:30 p.m. Sept. 21, at Barnes & Noble, Har-Mar Mall, Roseville, at 7 p.m. Sept. 21, and at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls, at 7 p.m. Sept. 22.

Carole E. Barrowman teaches at Alverno College in Milwaukee and blogs at www.carolebarrowman.com.