When it comes to language, Irish poets place a distant second to the crooks in crime novels. Say you're planning a big bank heist. The crew you recruit for the job is likely to include a jugmarker, the tactical genius who designs these delicate operations; a lip man to deliver the boss's orders; a boxman to crack the safe; a bagman to handle the loot; a wheelman to drive the getaway car; and maybe a couple of buttonmen ("they hurt people") to facilitate the whole enterprise. Roger Hobbs has named GHOSTMAN (Knopf, $24.95) after the most elusive gang member - the guy who makes everything disappear. "I'm very good at what I do," says Jack Delton (not his name, but it'll do). "I've survived because I'm extremely careful. I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone. I trust no one." Sexy as that sounds, it's not quite true. Five years earlier, Jack botched an elaborate bank job in Kuala Lumpur, putting him in serious debt to Marcus Hayes, once the master of all jugmarkers and, in Jack's view, "the most brutal man I'd ever met." To shrink his debt, Jack agrees to clean up the mess after another of Marcus's intricately planned robberies - knocking off an armored car full of casino cash - goes bad. How bad? "Bodies everywhere, loot missing, feds circling." That kind of bad. Hobbs, a first-time novelist who's barely out of college but already writing with the poise of an old pro, has put a great deal of wit and ingenuity into Jack's sophisticated professional skills. As someone whose life depends on his ability to operate in plain sight while remaining invisible, Jack is a master at the art of disguise. Give him a bottle of hair dye and the right wardrobe pieces and he can age 20 years, change nationality and walk away with your watch, your wallet and your daughter. But Jack is no common trickster, and his daring criminal exploits are grounded in detailed, well-researched knowledge of all kinds of practical matters, from picking locks to faking the Kazakhstan Crown Diamond. The dangerous mop-up job he's doing for Marcus also involves violence on a grand scale. Lucky for us, Jack's elastic work ethic allows for that too. "No sane person enjoys killing," he concedes, "but it isn't as bad as people make it out to be." Although Hobbs is an assured stylist who favors clean, precise prose, he handles violence with a lyric touch. In a narrative stuffed with gruesome murders, the most graphic death is executed in a gracefully choreographed scene that's remarkably poignant - because it shows Jack in a rare moment of conflict with what appears to be a nascent conscience. Nobody gets a free pass in Denise Mina's sobering novels, not even the white-haired grandfather in GODS AND BEASTS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $25.99) who's cut down by 10 rounds from an automatic pistol during a post office robbery. After quickly handing his 4-year-old grandson to a stranger, Brendan Lyon, a retired bus driver and a union activist back in the day, steps forward to help fill a canvas bag of money for the robber, who shows his thanks by emptying his gun into the old man. That's only one of the elements Mina weaves into her bleak account of how corruption can poison a city like Glasgow, with its deep economic problems and intransigent class divisions. A popular politician caught in a sex scandal, a petty crook who makes the regrettable mistake of stealing a crime boss's car, two police officers tempted by a stash of drug money, and the strange young man who watched over Brendan's grandson during the robbery all play their fated roles in this thoughtful look at how good people can go bad. There's a grand design to Charles Todd's period novels featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective who returned from the battlefields of World War I burdened with a heavy load of survivor's guilt. Each of these elegant mysteries takes Rutledge to some rural district of England scarred by unhealed war wounds and offers him the chance to do penance by solving a crime and restoring justice. This journey of redemption continues in PROOF OF GUILT (Morrow, $25.99) when the inspector is sent to a village in Essex to find a prosperous wine merchant who has gone missing and may be the victim of a murder back in London. With a gentleman's pocket watch as his only clue, Rutledge cuts through the history of a family dynasty to expose the original sin that left later generations fighting a war no one could win. Laughter is a subversive weapon when you live under a repressive regime. That's the take-away lesson from Colin Cotterill's gravely funny novels set in Indochina in the 1970s and honoring the extravagantly colorful life of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the national (indeed, the only) coroner of Laos, "a country without a constitution or a body of laws." In his latest adventure, THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DIE (Soho, $25.95), the irascible Dr. Siri is recently retired, but still a thorn in the side of the Pathet Lao government. Unable to communicate with the dead souls who regularly appear to him, Dr. Siri is delighted to take a tutorial with the bona fide witch engaged by the general in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture to contact the spirit of his dead brother. Since that entails a trip to a provincial region noted for "boat races, beer, views, elephants," as well as romantic cruises up the Mekong, Dr. Siri has no trouble persuading his wife to go along - a fateful decision that contributes a moving chapter to her memoirs. 'I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone, says the ghostman. 'I trust no one'.

It's 1920, and the body of a man turns up, apparently the victim of a collision with an automobile. With no identification on the body other than an expensive pocket watch, it seems unlikely that Scotland Yard's Inspector Rutledge will be able to get to the bottom of this unusual crime (this was a time when motorcars were still fairly uncommon). But the watch provides a clue, leading Rutledge to a wine-making family, one of whose members has been missing for a while. Some readers, familiar with modern-day forensics, might have difficulties with the basic premise that a dead man can't be identified but fans of the long-running Rutledge series will enjoy this one. It has a good, convoluted story and a few surprises that should keep readers on their toes. A solid entry in this always reliable series.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

Inspector Rutledge's 15th investigation concerns a corpse without a name. Although its injuries are consistent with being struck down by a motorcar, the body lying in a quiet street in Chelsea shows signs of having been dragged along, and all identification was removed except for a handsome heirloom watch in a vest pocket. Tracing the origin of the timepiece leads Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge (The Confession, 2012, etc.) to French, French and Traynor, wine merchants: Lewis French, grandson of the founder, inherited the watch after his older brother Michael died in the war. Mr. Lewis French is unavailable to interview. Gooding, the firm's chief clerk, says he's in Essex awaiting the arrival of his partner and cousin Matthew Traynor, who oversees the firm's production of Madeira in Portugal. But is he? His sister hasn't spoken to him recently. Nor has his fiancee, or his former fiancee. Could Lewis be the Chelsea corpse? Could it be Matthew Traynor, who has yet to arrive from Portugal? Rutledge discovers sibling squabbles and a heated encounter decades ago concerning the ownership of the Portuguese vineyards. Following this lead brings him to the doorstep of a Mrs. Bennett, whose husband is missing and whose staff is composed of prisoners and mental patients released to her care, including the manipulative Alfonso Diaz, who looks forward to returning to Portugal to die. When more unidentifiable bodies turn up, Rutledge will have his hands full putting names to them, identifying motives for their deaths and disproving his Acting Chief Superintendent's choice of villains. Sturdily if not elegantly plotted, with the ghost of Hamish, the soldier Rutledge ordered executed in the war, still haranguing him.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The mother and son who use the Todd nom de plume continue to impress with their 15th Rutledge mystery (after 2012's The Confession), coupling a gripping whodunit with their ongoing exploration of the aftereffects of the hell of WWI on the human psyche. In 1920, the Scotland Yard homicide inspector is still haunted by his experiences in the trenches and guilt over shooting one of his men for disobeying an order. Adding to Rutledge's anxiety is the arrival of a new boss, who sends him to look into a suspicious hit-and-run in London's Chelsea neighborhood. No witness saw or heard anything. Only a valuable French-made watch in the possession of the unidentified victim gives a clue to his identity. As usual, the authors toss a lot of plot balls in the air and manage to juggle them deftly. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.