Mike Shea on the month’s new releases

Ben Rehder

Flat Crazy

St. Martin's Minotaur

Dwarf Chinese porn stars? An ex-con hunting guide who accidentally bumps off his clients and friends? These are just a few of the offbeat characters who populate Flat Crazy (St. Martin's Minotaur), the third and cleverest installment of Austinite Ben Rehder's Blanco County Mystery series. His caper recipe is tried-and-true: Start with a preposterous situation (in this case, an undocumented Mexican worker allegedly attacked by the mythical chupacabra), stir in a square-jawed authority figure (studly game warden John Marlin trying to unravel a series of mysterious deaths), and season with a spicy mix of corpses, witless buffoons, and unwitting bystanders. Rehder displays real affinity for his Texas Hill Country setting, and he imbues the place with a unique sense of place. Flat Crazy is pure, guilt-free pleasure for those who like their mysteries with a side order of weird.

Alan Tennant

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth With the Peregrine Falcon

Knopf

The migration patterns of Falco peregrinus tundrius sound like less than the stuff of great adventure. But preconceptions fall by the wayside in On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth With the Peregrine Falcon (Knopf) as free-spirited Texas naturalist Alan Tennant spins riveting yarns about tracking the migrating tundra peregrine falcons by air from Padre Island north to Alaska and south to Belize. Tennant and old-school pilot George Vose (a charming septuagenarian rogue) embark on their odyssey in a rickety Cessna Skyhawk equipped with stolen radio-tracking equipment. Every air mile and fuel stop deserves an anecdote. Their entry into Canada becomes a seriocomic encounter with the Mounties and their Mexican landings involve mordida, smuggling accusations, and encounters with armed pot smugglers. By turns moving and hilarious the book is destined to become an instant classic of popular naturalist writing.

Kim Wozencraft

Wanted

St. Martin's

Dallas native Kim Wozencraft made her name with Rush, the best-selling fictionalization and movie of her undercover narcotics work. Combine that experience with her subsequent stretch behind bars (for perjury) and you've got perfect source material for Wanted (St. Martin's), her novel about Diane Wellman, a young Texas policewoman who winds up in the pen after being framed for possession. In short order she busts out with her cell mate, repentant political radical Gail Rubin, and they're on the run, fussing and arguing every step of the way. Wanted rings true when cops are in the scene—talking, working, even just goofing around. But Rubin and Wellman on the lam are a dreary duo, and they numb the reader long before Wozencraft's well-crafted surprise ending.