The chronicler of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (The Colors of All the Cattle, 2018, etc.) and 44 Scotland Street (A Time of Love and Tartan, 2018, etc.) takes on Nordic noir. Guess who comes out on top.The staff of Malm's Sensitive Crimes Department are pretty sensitive themselves. Ulf Varg worries what sorts of life choices will be left to him once he turns 40. Anna Bengsdotter, married to an anaesthetist, is secretly in love with Ulf, and he with her. Carl Holgersson shoulders most of the squad's actual work out of a cheerful sense of duty. Clerical assistant Erik Nykvist fishes whenever he can and dreams of his retirement, when he expects to fish even more. The group is evidently assigned to investigate crimes too marginal and quirky for anyone else in law enforcement. Why would someone stab market trader Malte Gustafsson painfully but ineffectually behind his knee? Has university student Bim Sundstrm's boyfriend gone to the North Pole, as she claims, or has she actually done away with him? (Not-really-a-spoiler alert: She's made him up in response to her chums' nonstop questions about her love life.) And why has someone launched a social media attack that seems intended to put the spa run by Police Commissioner Felix Ahlstrm's cousin out of business? Tearing himself from the side of Marten, the beloved poodle mix he's taught to cope with his deafness by lip-reading, Ulf and his cohort reluctantly partner with uniformed officer Blomquist to bring the parties involved to justice.Fans of the bestselling author's long-running franchises won't be surprised by the two most distinctive features of the gravely waggish department's caseload: The mysteries seem both utterly inconsequential and quietly provocative, and they have long tails that continue to flop around even after they're nominally solved. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

THE much-lamented death of Philip Kerr means that METROPOLIS (Marion Wood/Putnam, $28) is the last we'll see of his cynical antihero, Bernie Gunther, an honest policeman whose life is a daily struggle to preserve a shred of human decency in the decadent world of Berlin between the two world wars. Kerr's 14th novel in this series proves to be Gunther's origin story, which makes it feel imperative as well as poignant. "I've been lucky," says Gunther, who saw action in the trenches of the Great War. "I've come through the worst of it with my soul still intact." That sense of hopeful optimism would be ground down in the years that followed, but now it's only 1928 and he still believes he can stand up for the miserable and the mistreated, for people like the prostitutes being murdered while they ply their trade, then ceremoniously scalped. Kerr's studies of the wounded veterans populating the streets of Berlin are as arresting as his portrait of Hans Gross, the police photographer known as "Cecil B. DeMorgue." "Metropolis," the Otto Dix triptych that illustrates the text, must have been under Kerr's nose when he wrote the novel's vivid night-life scenes, as observed in underground clubs like the Topkeller, a lesbian cabaret known for staging Black Masses, and the Cabaret of the Nameless, "a place all respectable people should avoid," according to Gunther's scandalized landlady. Avoided by all but the artists, that is. As George Grosz tells Gunther, "My themes as an artist are despair, disillusionment, hate, fear, corruption, hypocrisy and death." Of all the sights of this jaded city none are more appalling than the stark images of amputee veterans rolling along on wooden "cripple-carts." "Ten years after the armistice, Berlin's disabled veterans were still so ubiquitous that nobody - myself included - gave them a second thought," Gunther confesses. "They were like stray cats or dogs - always around." No wonder he chooses to disguise himself as one of them in order to catch the killer. No one will notice him, more's the shame and the pity. Tucking into A brand-new mystery series by Alexander McCall Smith is a lazy-dazy pleasure, something like going fishing. And, as the author reminds us in THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES (Pantheon, $24.95), "If you can't find the time to go fishing, then ... well, what's the point?" McCall Smith's Swedish detective, Ulf (the Wolf) Varg, heads up a special unit of the Malmö Criminal Investigation Authority charged with probing crimes of a peculiar nature. There's the curious case of the owner of a market stall who was stabbed in the back of the knee. And a head-scratcher about a lonely student suspected of murdering her imaginary boyfriend. Not to mention the mysterious matter of the werewolf terrorizing clients at a spa. There are no connections among these bizarre crimes, which are resolved individually, with humor and a dash of tristesse. What binds the stories are the tight relationships of Varg and his colleagues and their hilariously human crotchets. They share their thoughts on everything from dealing with dry skin to political correctness (someone worried about using the word "midget" for a dance instructor is advised that "it's safer to call him a very small person"). As for Varg, he's such a sweetheart that he teaches his deaf dog to lipread. Talk about timely! Peter May's unnerving nail-biter, THE MAN WITH NO FACE (Quercus, $26.99), IS set in Brussels, where a diplomatic debate is politely raging over Britain's possible membership in the European Union. Although the politics are dirty and the politicians dirtier, May's prescient plot actually dates back to 1979, two years before this novel was first published in England. For his sins against the dignity of his stuffy Scottish newspaper, a headstrong journalist named Neil Bannerman has been sent to cover the boring negotiations. Lucky for him, a professional assassin known as Kale is also on his way to Brussels, on assignment to eliminate a high-ranking British diplomat. With his unforgettable mug ("What was it about this face whose still, dark eyes stared out from the back seat?" a spooked cabdriver asks himself), Kale seems a strange choice for a hit man. But he knows his bloody business. NAISIE dobbs is adept at repairing an automobile engine and driving an ambulance. That's her dangerous job in the american AGENT (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99), Jacqueline Winspear's latest mystery featuring this trained nurse and full-time sleuth. It's 1940 and Britain is bearing up under the Blitz when a government agent asks Maisie to investigate the murder of an American war correspondent. "We can't lay this one at Hitler's feet," her contact says, pointing out that the killing took place at the reporter's London lodgings. Well, yes, we can, because everything in this series turns on the psychological traumas of war. That's what gives Maisie's sometimes prosaic cases their sturdy backbone and air of urgency - that and Maisie's own dynamic character. Hang onto your helmet and carry on, girl! MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Ulf Varg, the lead detective in this appealing series launch from Smith (the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series), works for the Sensitive Crimes Department of the MalmA¶, Sweden, Criminal Investigation Authority. He and his colleagues, including married Anna Bengsdotter, on whom the divorced Ulf has a guilty crush, investigate minor crimes, such as the nonfatal stabbing of a market vendor in the back of the knee. Ulf easily figures out whodunit, the focus being on why the culprit, basically a decent man, did the deed and his subsequent treatment within the justice system. Another case involves a lonely young woman, Bim SundstrA¶m, who invents an imaginary boyfriend, Sixten, to impress others. Complications ensue when Bim claims that Sixten, a medical student, has suddenly left her and gone off to a research station at the North Pole. A third case concerns a purported werewolf, whose nocturnal howls are driving away customers from a resort spa. As usual, the interpersonal relationships Smith so sensitively portrays and the ethical issues he raises matter far more than the sleuthing. Fans of gentle mysteries will look forward to the sequel. Agent: Robin Straus, Robin Straus Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

McCall Smith, famed for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, set in Botswana, now extends his gift for comic situations and insightful commentary to a projected series set in Sweden Scandi-Lite, his publisher has dubbed it, in contrast to the bleakness of Scandinavian noir, but the hook sells McCall Smith short. While there's a great deal of humor here, this isn't as ""lite,"" say, as cozy series set in a knitting shop. It's true that the Department of Sensitive Crimes is a catchall agency for crimes that the police in Sweden's Criminal Investigation Authority consider either too minor, too weird, or too annoying to deal with. But, as in the No. 1 Ladies' series, McCall Smith uses these cases to shine a revealing light on human nature, including the foibles and heartaches of the investigators. The department is headed by Ulf Varg (both names mean wolf in Swedish), who is a bit of a lone wolf himself. Ulf and his investigators in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden, investigate three sensitive cases over the course of the novel: the stabbing in the knee of a market vendor; the disappearance and suspected murder of an imaginary boyfriend; and various sightings (and hearings) of a werewolf at a Scandinavian spa. The second case is especially fascinating, showing how a lie can expand. Detective Varg promises to be a complex series character, and the department itself looks certain to deliver more oddball yet poignant cases.--Connie Fletcher Copyright 2010 Booklist