THERE ARE PLENTY of fictional cops and private eyes with anger issues, woman troubles and drinking problems. And then there's Virgil Flowers, the happy-go-lucky hero of John Sandford's roughneck crime novels set in rural Minnesota. A tall, lean guy who lives in cowboy boots and T-shirts from vintage-band concerts, Virgil wears his blond hair "country-long like Waylon Jennings." He leaves the bigtime crime-busting to his boss in Minneapolis, Lucas Davenport ("not a bad guy, though a trifle intense"), so he can grab the fun assignments for himself. In DEADLINE (Putnam, $27.95), Virgil's fishing buddy Johnson Johnson (like his brother, Mercury, he was named by his outboard-motor-enthusiast father, Big Johnson) alerts him to a crime wave in the Mississippi River town of Trippton. It seems that a syndicate of miscreants has been stealing dogs and auctioning them off to "bunchers" for resale as laboratory animals. Since dogs are members of the family in this hunting community, it's Virgil's job to calm down folks like Winky Butterfield (who openly weeps over the black Labs he has lost) and the other good old boys who have organized and armed themselves into a lynch mob. "You got a colorful town here," Virgil says admiringly. Elsewhere in Trippton, the school board is discussing a motion to kill Clancy Conley, a reporter who has stumbled onto irrefutable evidence that they've been embezzling a million dollars a year from the budget. And to add yet another complication to this insane plot, while Virgil and Johnson Johnson are up in the hills searching for the doomed dogs, they walk smack into a well-equipped commercial meth lab. This means calling in the cavalry, a group of cowboy D.E.A. agents who love a good takedown as much as Virgil. "You guys are the most interesting feds, no doubt about it," he marvels after their wildcat raid on the meth lab. Despite Virgil's casual air, Sandford's humor isn't flip. He sees Trippton's battered trailer homes, the live pit bulls and dead cars in the yards and the no-trespassing signs at the gates, along with all the signs of misery other regional authors record in their novels. But there's compassion in his gaze and genuine affection in his raucous laughter. ALEX MARWOOD UNDERSTANDS "bad girls" like Cheryl, a 15-year-old runaway who supplements her street smarts with her income from thievery as she hides out at 23 Beulah Grove, a run-down boardinghouse in a grubby sector of London that's slowly and fitfully becoming gentrified. But the title Of THE KILLER NEXT DOOR (Penguin, paper, $16) should be a tip-off that one of Cheryl's neighbors is up to no good. Besides Cheryl, who's the most endearing waif outside of a Dickens novel, the other at-risk women are Vesta, the feisty old lady in the basement apartment, and Collette, on the run for three years from an underworld figure who really, really wants to find her. The killer, a lunatic who thinks of himself as "Lover," is bound to catch one of these generously drawn women - if the lecherous and obscenely obese landlord doesn't get to her first. Although not as dark as Marwood's first novel, "The Wicked Girls," this psychological thriller is more macabre, in a creepy comic vein, and vividly nasty when it gets to the physical details. But in its own disturbing way, this is a story about love and friendship, dangerous commodities for people who live on the margins of society and survive by never trusting a single living soul. MARY MILEY put a neat twist on the pastiche novel in her first mystery, "The Impersonator," when she introduced a clever miss who played kiddie roles on the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s. Jessie Beckett, as she now calls herself, returns in SILENT MURDERS (Minotaur, $25.99), working in Hollywood as a "girl Friday" at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, where the great Douglas Fairbanks is filming "Don Q, Son of Zorro." The protagonists of timewarp novels can be insufferably smug about mingling with history's swells, but Jessie doesn't lose her head, even when she becomes Mary Pickford's confidante. Being an intimate of Hollywood's First Couple gives Jessie entree into Roaring Twenties parties where stars do drugs, get smashed on champagne and occasionally fail to make it home alive. Although the parade of celebrities does lose its novelty, Miley captures both the elegance and the absurdity of Hollywood in the Jazz Age. And Jessie truly is a honey. THE FORGOTTEN GIRL (New American Library, paper, $15), David Bell's moody study of a dysfunctional town, starts off with the disappearance of a popular high school senior on graduation night. Years later, Jason Danvers still feels guilty about fighting with his best friend right before he went missing. "I think all the time about the people who've gone away," he confesses. Which explains why he's stunned to see his sister, Hayden, back home after five years, clean and sober and asking him to watch over her teenage daughter while she settles some old business. But when Hayden doesn't return - and remains out of sight for most of the book - the narrative slips into one of those circular I've Got a Secret plots that are structurally unsound as well as absolutely maddening. Misdirection and scattering false clues are part of the game, but withholding information isn't playing fair.

In Marwood's engrossing standalone thriller, Det. Insp. Merri Cheyne from Scotland Yard is investigating a case involving a grisly find of severed in a rundown boarding house in a London suburb. After Cheyne learns that the fingers belonged to a resident who recently witnessed a murder, body parts from other victims surface in and around the house, which turns out to be a destination for people with dark and embarrassing pasts that they wish to conceal. Church's level narration during the most nightmarish chapters casually segues listeners into the macabre, making Marwood's story all the more terrifying. Church is clearly practiced in voice variation, and delivers several disturbed, and disturbing, male and female characters. The subtle vocal nuances she assigns to each character throughout the reading will keep listeners attentive. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Starred Review. The latest psychological thriller from the author of The Wicked Girls is set in a run-down apartment building that's owned by a dodgy landlord and occupied by characters who have lots of secrets but few options. An accidental death in the building pulls residents into a reluctant conspiracy, leading in time to even more gruesome revelations. Collette, who's hiding from her shady ex-boss with a bag of stolen cash, is ostensibly the main character, but the others are fully fleshed out: Cher, an underage pickpocket who's run away from a dysfunctional foster-care system; handsome Hossein, an Iranian political refugee waiting for his residency; reclusive former music teacher Gerard; Thomas, the odd duck who rents the attic; and Vesta, the elderly woman in the basement apartment. Their troubles are compounded by a slovenly, leering landlord, Roy Preece, who spies and preys on his tenants, but the real evil is the "Lover," a killer who lives among them and whose identity is concealed for much of the book. The characters drive the plot and are skillfully drawn and well-voiced by actress Imogen Church. Such a proficient follow-up to an award-winning first novel makes Marwood an author to watch and follow. VERDICT Highly recommended for mystery and thriller collections. ["This tightly plotted story grabs readers from the opening paragraphs," read the starred review of the Penguin hc, LJ 7/14.]-Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, IA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.