INCOMING

• Ace Atkins, Dark End of the Street.  A Nick Travers mystery, the third in the series.   "Former pro football player-turned-college professor Nick Travers came of age in a smoky New Orleans bar -- an he owes a monumental debt to its owners, Jo Jo and Loretta, who took him under their wings.  Now Loretta wants Nick to locate her missing brother, the legendary singer Clyde James, who vanished in the sixties after his wife and a band member were murdered.  The Dixie mafia, a blonde bombshell grifter, and an Elvis-worshipping hitman are suddenly interested in the soul man as well, and Nick can't help wondering why.  The answer lies somewhere in Memphis and the Mississippi Delta, where casino money, dirty politics, and old secrets bubble up to the surface of the New South."  I love that this paperback has a quote from Robert B. Parker:  "Ace Atkins can really write."  Atkins, of course has continued the Spenser series after Parker's death.
• Jemiah Jefferson, Fiend.  Vampire novel.  "In nineteenth-century Italy, young Orfeo Ricari teeters on the brink of adulthood.  His new tutor instructs him in literature and poetry during the day and guides him in the world of sensual pleasure at night.  But a journey to Paris will teach young Orfeo much more.  For in Paris he will become a vampire.  Told in his own words. this is the story of the life, death, rebirth and education of a vampire.  No one else could properly describe the shadowy existence, the endless hunger, the heightened senses or the amazing power of the undead.  No one else could recount the passing of the years and the slow realization of what it mean to grasp immortality, to live on innocent blood, to be a...FIEND"  We are into Anne Rice territory here, folks.  And the Oxford comma be damned!
• "J. R. Roberts" (Robert Randisi), The Gunsmith #65:  Showdown in Rio Malo.  "Clint Adams' old pal Joe Bags has gone and got himself elected sheriff of Rio Malo, a town trying to turn respectable.  But when the killing starts, Joe learns that there's more to being sheriff than pinning on a tin star.  Suddenly the whole town's turned yellow.  And the only ones with any guts are three misfits who sign on as deputies -- one of them's still wet behind the ears, another old enough to be his granddad, and the third;s just too damn pretty for her own good...But the Gunsmith figures that any help is better than none, as Rio Malo gets ready to explode into a dusty hell of blood and bullets..."  Randisi's productivity and the quality of his work is amazing.
• Sam Siciliano, The White Worm.  A "Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes," the fourth of (now) five by Siciliano.  "A journey to Whitby heralds the start of a new case for SHERLOCK HOLMES and Dr. Henry Vernier.  Their client is in love, but a mysterious letter has warned him of the dangers of the romance.  The object of his affection is said to be under a thousand-year-old druidic curse, doomed to take the form of a giant snake.  Locals speak of a green glow in the woods at night, and a white apparition amongst the trees.  Is there sorcery at work, or is a human hand behind the terrors of Diana's Grove?"  This is part of a series of both new and old adventures of Sherlock Holmes by various authors published by Titan Books.  Siciliano used Bram Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm as a springboard for this book.  (Two of his earlier Sherlock Holmes books were inspired by other books -- one by The Phantom of the Opera, the other by Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.)
• Gore Vidal writing as "Cameron Kay," Thieves Fall Out.  Crime thriller first published as a Gold Medal original in 1953, a time when the author found himself short of enough cash to keep him in champagne.  To solve this problem, Vidal churned out four mysteries:  three under the "Edgar Box" pseudonym and this one as by "Cameron Kay."  (Cameron Kay was the name of Vidal's great-uncle -- his mother's uncle -- and a former attorney general in Texas.)  Vidal didn't think much of the book and didn't want it republished.  Three years after Vidal's death, his agent gave Hardcase Crime permission to reprint the book.  What was it they said about the best laid plans?  I really don't know if this one is as bad as is claimed, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, if only because one of my favorite books is Vidal's first novel, Williwaw.