I just finished a couple of very good new books this week. The first one, The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli, is a small town murder mystery told in the first person by one of the younger members of the Rand clan, famous for being local thieves, but never violent. One of them, however, DOES go on a killing spree, but is framed for an additional murder which someone else committed. Disentangling this is the story line. Needless to say the Rands are all very Damon-Runyonesque and amusing, especially to someone who's never had a break-in at their place of residence. Anyway, it's still an interesting, well paced book.

Next is Syndrome E, by Franck Thilliez, a French writer, very fast paced and interesting. Its starting point is a mysterious old film short that makes people commit suicide after watching it (shades of The Ring!). The assigned detective team is a psychologically-damaged older man and single-mother younger detective combination, fairly common, but they split up often enough to keep things moving. The translator seems to want to make sure he or she doesn't miss a single idiom, but otherwise it's excellent, and unusual.