Crawfish Mountain by Ken Wells, Random House, fiction, 384 pp., $25.95

From its exquisite cover art to its last word, this book delivers. Tom Wolfe calls Wells the Cajun Carl Hiassen.

Imagine a bunch of Cajun ‘Davids’ fighting big oil and bad government Goliaths. Think James Carville locked in a room with George Bush. Either way, it’s a fight you want to see.

Big oil is represented by the horrific Thomas Huff, a man utterly bereft of grace. He wants to run a pipeline into the bayou which would endanger the estuary and take a piece of Justin Pitre’s island, land he inherited from his beloved grandfather with whom he’d spent a lot of time redfishing, and for him and his plucky wife, Grace, their chenier, Crawfish Mountain, is sacred.

Meanwhile, Louisiana governor Joe T. Evangeline has a mysterious debt to pay to big oil. Neither the Pitres nor the environmentalists, who include the beautiful Julie Galjour and the local ob/gyn doc, nicknamed Dr. Duck, want this pipeline to happen. Someone has to convince the gov to do the right thing, and that won’t happen without drastic action. So they take drastic action.

But before that, the gov, an attractive young widower, falls for Julie at her father’s crawfish boil. (I have no idea what a crawfish boil is, but it sounds like a sacrament in Louisiana. Ditto for redfishing. ) So while love claims Joe T., lust is overtaking Mr. Huff who’s found himself a tall blonde tootsie with a big secret.

And as if the bayou weren’t endangered enough, someone is dumping barrels of toxic stew that are killing the fish, leaving a sheen of greasy poison on the water, but the resourceful and committed Dr. Duck is on the case.

Crawfish Mountain is a non-toxic barrel of fun. It’s also a pointed reminder to safeguard what we have because when it’s gone, it’s gone. I closed the book reluctantly, wishing there were more.

Wells is a former editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Three Sisters by James D. Doss, St. Martin’s Minotaur, mystery, 307 pp., $24.95

This is the twelfth book in the Charlie Moon series and it’s a doozy. Moon is a very attractive middle-aged Ute Indian rancher and tribal investigator in Granite Creek, Colorado. He has an ancient aunt, Daisy Perika, who has a mind like Machiavelli and the soul of a stock broker. Beneath her dreadful exterior, deep deep down, there is a faithful Roman Catholic and a small though solid scrap of conscience. Did I fail to mention she speaks with the dead? Living in Daisy’s household is an orphan, Sarah Frank, who at age 15 is madly in love with Charlie Moon. She intends to marry him, which would come as big news to Charlie Moon.

The three sisters are the incredibly beautiful Astrid, Beatrice, and Cassandra Spencer. Astrid is found dead in her bedroom having been brutally consumed by a bear. Cassandra is a television psychic with the remarkable ability to report on crimes as they are being committed. Her ratings are through the roof. Beatrice, an artist, marries the late Astrid’s barely grieving husband an indecent week following her sister’s gruesome death, but she takes a stab at widowhood herself when her brand new husband drives his fancy sports car off a steep cliff under mysterious circumstances, and the authorities are unable to locate his corpse.

Local police chief and Charlie’s best friend, Scott Parris, deputizes Charlie so he can assist with the various investigations. Daisy knows she knows something that would help, but she can’t recall what it is. Charlie, while searching for Bea’s husband, meets a bear/woman and makes some startling discoveries. The denouement is sublime, absolutely sublime.

The book reads like an old-fashioned melodrama with sidesplitting author asides and mischievously titled chapters. You can almost smell the pines and the sage while the snow and sleet pelt the rocky landscape like punishment.

Doss heartily conveys his version of joy and justice in this irresistibly unique tale.

Murder on K Street by Margaret Truman, Ballantine Books, mystery, 318 p., $24.95

Shades of the two most famous Washington, D.C. ‘Jacks’, Kennedy and Abramoff, combine in this smooth and solid 23rd installment in Truman’s capital crimes series. Truman, daughter of President and Mrs. Harry Truman, knows about life in the power capital of the world.

Phil Rotondi, a former district attorney, has been the best friend of presidential hopeful Illinois Senator Lyle Simmons since their college days, so when Simmons calls to say he’s found his wife bludgeoned to death in their D.C. mansion, Rotondi races to the scene.

Simmons has two children, a son who is president of a powerful lobbying firm, and a daughter whose political ideology clashes with her father’s. Neither respect him, though the son, a man of limited achievement, fears him. His daughter believes he killed her mother. It’s certainly odd that Simmons’ call to 911 was the third he made after finding Jeannette dead. Additionally, the victim has a sister, a woman desperately jealous of Jeannette, who is in and out of mental health facilities and who had access to the home.

The passive-aggressive Rotondi and the slick and ambitious Simmons share a secret about Jeannette, and it is for her sake, ostensibly, that Rotondi conducts his own investigation into the murder.

Truman writes with intelligence. This is a surefire page-turner for a long, lazy afternoon.

My Lady Judge, A Mystery of Medieval Ireland by Cora Harrison, St. Martin’s Minotaur, mystery, 320 pp., $$24.95

If you are in the mood for a quick trip to Ireland in a time machine and you love solving a great mystery with multiple suspects this is the book for you! ”The Burren” is a 115 square mile area in the Northwest corner of County Clare, south of Galway in the province of Munster. It is 1509 and the Rule of Law is that of the Brehon or, in English, the Judge. Mara as the Brehon of The Burren is an intriguing divorced woman who not only dispenses justice on “judgment day”, but runs a household, tends a lovely garden and schools six rambunctious boys who would-be lawyers in the ancient laws that have governed the land of the Celts beyond memory.

Mara as judge must discern the truth of any case that comes before her in order to dispense appropriate judgments. The intricacy of the law she interprets adds to the suspense level of the story. Was this a murder most foul? If it was who did it? Was the victim partly responsible for his own untimely end? How pure was the motive of the perpetrator? What will the sentence be if the killer is found?

The setting, plot and characters are beautifully crafted. The prose is skilful and suspension of disbelief is a cinch. This book is the first in a series planned by the author and her first adult fiction. I for one can’t wait to read the next and the next and the next. Review by Alice Hawrilenko.

Extracurricular Activities by Maggie Barbieri, St. Martin’s Minotaur, cozy mystery, 294 pp., $23.95

This is the delightful second installment in the Dr. Alison Bergeron series following last year’s superb debut, Murder 101. Bergeron is an English professor at a small Catholic college on the Hudson. She is divorced from biology professor, Dr. Ray Stark, a womanizer of prodigious energy, and while Bergeron may have had many splendid fantasies about his painful demise, she wasn’t prepared to find him dead at her kitchen table with his hands and feet missing. The killing has all the earmarks of a hit by the Maceli family who are, sadly, no strangers to either of the professors. Stark had an affair with the Micelis’ young daughter who turned up dead in Bergeron’s trunk last year, and Bergeron has known Peter Miceli and his spooky wife, Gianna, since college.

So whom do you call when confronted by a corpse? Why uber- hunky Det. Bobby Crawford, of course. Bergeron and the cop met last year, but their blossoming romance went from sizzling to stalled after Bergeron learned that Crawford was still technically married to a nice lady who wants an annulment, which involves a lengthy process at best.

Meanwhile, Bergeron receives an unexpected gift. The next door neighbors, Jackson and Terri, have abandoned their golden retriever, Trixie, and have fled to parts unknown. It bears mention that Terri was involved with Stark, and that she believes Jackson killed him.

Barbieri’s writing is crisp and clever, and she tosses in plot twists like grenades. The result is superior entertainment.

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