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ABOUT FACE

By Donna Leon, Atlantic Monthly Press, 288 pages, $33.50

There are now 18 books in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series, and while the Commissario never seems to age or change, Italy does. That's always the subtext of Donna Leon's brilliantly conceived works. Brunetti does his job while the world around him seems always swirling out of control. There isn't a weak book in this series, and About Face is definitely one of the best of the lot.

The Face is a woman – rich, fascinating, a woman of mystery. Brunetti meets her at a dinner and is sufficiently fascinated to make his wife comment. But there is something about her, something that doesn't quite match up.

From that rather tame opening, Leon takes us into a case of murder for hire, and the lady with the unusual face might be a suspect, or maybe not. Under it all, there's garbage, thousands of tons of it, hauled from all over Europe to be dumped and buried and burned in southern Italy.

Leon's outrage at the appalling destruction of the Italian environment by Mafia-financed garbage haulers comes through in this book, but she never loses her cool. She maintains her distanced, elegant perspective. There are no shrieks, just statements of hard fact.

Leon has said she doesn't think this book is as dark as the previous two. Possibly not; dead children do not lightness make. But About Face concerns an evil that affects everyone in Italy, if not the world. And Leon reminds us, forcefully, that even the well-organized world of Commissario Brunetti is sitting on a rotting pile of trash.

LONG LOST

By Harlan Coben, Dutton, 384 pages, $35

A reader recently told me she had never read a Myron Bolitar novel because she had no interest in sports. I assured her that Myron is far more than a collection of athletic clichés, although, like Dick Francis's smart jockeys, he uses his natural talents as part of his method of detection.

Those talents are all in use in this exceptional new novel, Long Lost , in which Myron is summoned to Paris by his old flame Terese Collins, who is in more trouble than even she realizes.

Terese disappeared out of Myron's life eight years ago, and also out of her high-profile life as a CNN anchorwoman. Myron hunted for her, but she was dug in deeply in some remote spot.

Now, she has surfaced in Paris, waiting for an ex-husband that Myron never knew she had, and scared. Myron is hardly on French soil before he's in the sights of the police. And within hours, it's clear that Terese is in deadly danger and the danger goes deeper than anyone can fathom.

Just what hornet nest has been overturned by Terese's ex is only part of the plot of this superbly constructed mystery, which moves from France to London and back again. Luckily, Myron can call on his old pal Win Lockwood to provide the private jet and the endless cash it will take to find out all of Terese's secrets.

THE LAST DICKENS

By Matthew Pearl, Random House, 378 pages, $28.95

There have been other novels about the frenzy that accompanied the arrival of the latest chapters of Charles Dickens's serialized novels in the United States, but I can't think of one that is as beautifully written and cleverly plotted as The Last Dickens , by Matthew Pearl. Everything any reader could want is here: great complex characters, settings perfectly described and a plot full of twists that Dickens himself couldn't have done better.

The Last Dickens is, of course, the master's unfinished gem, the novel titled The Mystery of Edwin Drood . When Dickens died of a stroke, in 1870, he was within a couple of chapters of completion. Just what would have become of Drood has been a test for readers ever since. Several writers have attempted to construct a conclusion, but none seems quite right. That gap has left posterity with plenty of room to speculate, and Pearl, author of The Poe Shadow and The Dante Club , pulls out all the stops.

The story begins in India, at an outpost of the Raj. Then, in a trice, it moves to the piers of the Boston waterfront. A dark and sinister man arrives. Another man dies. A businessman, confronted with the dying, grasps a bundle of papers and reads “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” He knows what he has.

Those disparate bits all fall into place with the arrival of the police at the office of James Osgood, Dickens's U.S. publisher. Osgood had sent Daniel Sands, his most trusted employee, to the docks to meet the boat that was carrying the copy of Dickens's final instalment. Sands is dead and the police suspect that he was part of a scheme to steal and sell the manuscript. Osgood's business is at stake, and so is his reputation. He embarks, accompanied by Daniel's resolute sister, on a trip to England to salvage everything.

Fans of Pearl know that he's a wonder at capturing the feeling of the authors he resurrects in his historical novels. While he was great with Dante and Poe, this is by far his best, and will be fun not just for mystery fans but for devotees of Dickens as well.

THE MAO CASE

By Qiu Xiaolong, St. Martin's, 320 pages, $27.95

This is the first Inspector Chen Cao novel I've read, and if the other seven are nearly as good, then I'm in for a long treat. Author Qiu Xiaolong is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., but he grew up in Shanghai, the setting for this series, and he has a unique perspective on Chinese life.

This is modern China, an industrial tiger but with many old historical scars. Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is head of the Special Case Group, those cases deemed “sensitive” or “political' by his superiors. Chen Cao is a serious policeman, but he's a serious political cadre man too. That makes him a safe choice to handle assignments such as that of Mme. Jiao, granddaughter of one of Mao's mistresses. Jiao has turned up in Shanghai in a luxury apartment, living the high life. Is it possible that she's planning to cash in on some personal item belonging to the Great Helmsman? Something that might detract from the myth of Mao?

How Chen Cao goes about uncovering the secret of Jiao is a great story, and there's no shortage of real suspense. Getting an insider view of modern Shanghai and modern Chinese police techniques is just gilding the lily.

ANDEAN EXPRESS

By Juan De Recacoechea, translated by Adrian Althoff, Akashic books, 176 pages, $15.95

We don't get nearly enough South American crime fiction in translation here. We hear of the big names, but it takes a gutsy publisher like Akashic to bring the works of the Bolivian novelist Juan De Recacoechea into English. Subtle, nuanced, elegantly styled and beautifully translated by Adrian Althoff, Andean Express is a great introduction to this gifted author's work.

It's 1952, and on the train from La Paz to Arica, in Chile, a group of travellers are about to blunder into each other's secrets. There is, of course, a murder, but it's the interchange between the characters that's at the heart of this novel. De Recacoechea has touches of the old noir masters like Jim Thompson, but the voice is uniquely his as he explores everything from the highly structured caste and class systems of Bolivia to the desperation of love and loss.

TERMINAL FREEZE

By Lincoln Child, Doubleday, 320 pages, $27.95

One of the first scary movies I saw as a child was The Thing , with a group of researchers at the North Pole trapped with a thawing thing from outer space. There was very little gore and no special effects, and I still get a chill when I watch that movie on TV.

That same plot line works a treat in Terminal Freeze , in which a group of researchers, far above the Arctic Circle, find a huge frozen animal in a cave. The local aboriginal people implore the team to leave the ancient thing alone, but the lure of money and fame is too strong. The research team wants to thaw its find on an international television hookup.

You can guess what happens, but it's great reading just the same.