During WWI, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, seven British officers promise to reunite in Paris after the war to stage an informal road race to Nice. The surviving five meet as planned, and, during their race, two of them nearly die in what appear to be deliberate attempts to cause their cars to crash. A year later, in England, a parish priest dies in an automobile accident; oddly, but perhaps not coincidentally, the car he was driving is owned by one of the British officers. Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge is tasked with finding out what's going on; when his car is tampered with, too, apparently with the intent of doing him serious harm, he becomes determined to catch the culprit with all possible speed. The long-running Rutledge series has developed a devoted audience over the years, and this latest effort, boasting a clever story with some interesting twists, will do nothing to diminish readers' enthusiasm for a fascinating character and some first-rate historical writing.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist

In the first chapter of bestseller Todd's suspenseful 19th whodunit featuring Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge (after 2016's No Shred of Evidence), Andrew Brothers, a veteran of WWI, is nearly run off the road by another car while driving in the South of France in 1919. A year later in East Sussex, Rector Wright, the rector of St. Simon's church, borrows a motorcar belonging to another WWI veteran, Captain Standish, without the officer's permission. In a heavy rainstorm at night, Wright is killed instantly in a crash. The local constable, troubled by evidence of another vehicle at the scene of the tragedy, sends for Rutledge; he finds traces of paint on the captain's car, which suggests that the crash no an accident. Given that the dead man appeared to have no enemies and the collision occurred in the dark, Rutledge pursues the notion that Standish was the intended victim. As always, Todd (the mother-and-son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd) maintains a high degree of tension throughout and populates the story with vivid characters bearing the external and internal scars of war. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Ugly Americans on a European vacation are always good for a laugh. But you laugh at your peril at the Ugly Brits vacationing in America in rush of blood (Atlantic Monthly, $25), Mark Billingham's savage satire about good friends whose special bond originated in murder. Three couples who are all from London find themselves staying at the same cheesy beach resort on Siesta Key in Sarasota. That's as good a reason as any for Angie and Barry, Dave and Marina, and Ed and Sue to strike up a friendship when they meet at the Pelican Palms. The wives are jealous, competitive and catty, but still easier to take than their husbands. Ed is a vulgarian and a bully. Barry is a pathetic worm. Dave is a genial jackass. The thing is, one of these terrible tourists used precious vacation time to murder another guest at the resort, 14-year-old Amber-Marie Wilson, a friendly child with "mental difficulties," as her mother puts it. From the killer's interior monologues we learn that this won't be the last murder. Back home, where the couples have been hosting dinner parties to keep in touch, this perv is already haunting special-ed schools trolling for another victim. Billingham, who also writes the Tom Thorne mystery series, brings in investigators on both sides of the Atlantic to broaden the cast of characters and introduce some procedural details. Jeffrey Gardner, the American detective in charge, is the soul of compassion; but he'd be more inclined to give up on the file if it weren't for Jenny Quinlan, a trainee constable who prods him into letting her work his case along with a similar killing outside London. Even these good guys are flawed, which makes them attractively human, if not as monstrously fascinating as "the Sarasota Six," as they call themselves. "Nobody knows anyone really, do they?" Angie muses during one of the drunken dinner parties at which the hideous husbands and their enabler wives draw on their best social skills to conceal their kinky pleasures and secret sorrows. It's maddening, the way Billingham keeps us in suspense, cringing from each character while keeping watch as if our own lives depended on it - but we wouldn't want it any other way. the great war is never over in the mournful tales of the mother-and-son authors who write as Charles Todd. Inspector Ian Rutledge, the Scotland Yard detective in this elegant historical series, was shellshocked in battle and is still haunted by the dead. But those personal nightmares make him profoundly responsive to the suffering of others, like the wounded souls he encounters in RACING THE DEVIL (Morrow/ HarperCollins, $26.99). In 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, a group of English officers make a bet with the Devil. Those who survive will meet in Paris and race their motorcars to Nice. At the end of the war, the race is on, but one car is forced into a ravine and the driver barely survives. A year later, in East Sussex, another racing car is rammed off the road, and this time the driver - not the captain who owns the car, but the local rector - is killed. Evidence of foul play brings Rutledge down from London to a village that, like all the rural places he has visited in this series, is still mourning its war dead. Todd writes a rich mystery, but in investigating the murder Rutledge also probes the psychic wounds of the village and tries to minister to the collective survivor guilt of the living. "The dead," as the voice in his head tells him, "still believe it was worth dying for." anyone toying with the idea of emigrating might consider Siglufjordur, the outermost village in the north of Iceland and the setting of SNOWBLIND (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $25.99), a first novel by Ragnar Jonasson in a chilly translation by Quentin Bates. The story is set during the 2008 fiscal collapse; but since the boom never made it this far north, the crash doesn't make an impact either. Remote as it is, Siglufjordur proves the ideal job posting for Ari Thor Arason, a former theology student who recently graduated from the police academy. Ari Thor may be naïve when it comes to affairs of the heart, but he shows intelligence and persistence in investigating the apparently accidental death of a local author. This classically crafted whodunit holds up nicely, but Jonasson's true gift is for describing the daunting beauty of the fierce setting, lashed by blinding snowstorms that smother the village in "a thick, white darkness" that is strangely comforting. IT'S NEW YEAR'S eve in Sam Hawken's hard-boiled action novel WALK AWAY (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26). His protagonist puts in sweat time at the gym punching the heavy bag, rides home on a Harley, chows down on a poundand-a-half steak, with a bottle of Jack Daniel's . . . and then she falls into bed. Camaro Espinoza, who did tours in the Middle East, is tougher than an army boot. But she's got a soft spot for her sister, Annabel, who periodically calls for help with the brutal men she keeps hooking up with. Annabel sends out another distress call from Carmel begging her sister to rescue her one more time. But in dishing out punishment to Jake Collier, Camaro earns the hatred of his brother, Lukas, a stone killer whose homicidal exploits account for much of the action. Camaro isn't entirely believable as a fighting machine, but it's deeply satisfying to watch her take out an animal like Lukas.

Scotland Yard's Inspector Ian Rutledge battles his own shell shock and a rector's murderer in an English coastal hamlet.On the eve of near-certain death at the Somme, seven British officers make a pact that if they live through the war, they'll all meet again a year later for a race from Paris to Nice in the latest motorcars. The five survivors find the twisting, foggy roads more of a threat than they had bargained for. One of their number crashes in a fiery wreck. Unbeknownst to his comrades, he's been deliberately run off the road. A year later, in the village of Burling Gap, an eerily similar accident takes the life of the parish's beloved rector. The local constable is sharp enough to notice that it may not have been an accident at allwhy would the rector have been driving someone else's car without permission?and calls in Scotland Yard. The Yard sends Inspector Rutledge (No Shred of Evidence, 2016, etc.), whose powers of detection are sharpened by the ghost of Hamish, his fallen comrade. Rutledge uncovers the connection not only between the rector's murder and the race, but links to the disappearance of a local ne'er-do-well, a case of arson, and a missing girl. Despite the high body count, the pacing feels a bit slow. A perfectly competent but unexceptional entry in the crowded niche of interwar English village mysteries. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.