Book notes: The crime blotter

Private eye Tess Monaghan is back in No Good Deeds (William Morrow, June 27), the latest in the series penned by Laura Lippman, a former crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun. In this racially charged story of corruption and distrust, set in the author’s city, Tess and her beau find themselves neck-deep in a cover-up involving the murder of an assistant U.S. attorney. As they harbor a black teen who has crucial information about the case that puts him in danger, the couple comes face-to-face with crooked government agents, and discovers that some secrets should stay that way.

Just a short drive down I-95, the streets of Washington, D.C., are the inspiration for the 15th novel by George Pelecanos, an Emmy-nominated writer for The Wire.The Night Gardener (Little, Brown; August 8) follows homicide detective Gus Ramone, an honest cop who must balance raising a family in a dangerous city with the investigation of a local teen’s murder—a crime that shares eerie similarities with grisly slayings that rocked the area some 20 years earlier. Both books deliver thrills—along with the kind of heavy-handed ethical lessons that are, unfortunately, all too common in the genre.—Mike Olson