Mating Season — Jon Loomis

Jon Loomis's sharp and witty debut, High Season, starring Detective Frank Coffin, a onetime Baltimore homicide detective who came back to his hometown after one too many grisly crime scenes started to take their toll, was one of The Washington Post's best mysteries of the year and an editor's choice title for The New York Times Book Review. Coffin had hoped that the move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, would put an end to his panic attacks, but so far, the quirky Cape Cod tourist town has been every bit as brutal as the big city. Now in Loomis's winning follow-up, Coffin has to get a grip in order to investigate the murder of one of the town's most "popular" women.

Beautiful and the heir to a tremendous fortune, Kenji Sole had an active love life---a very active love life. When she's found stabbed to death on the floor of her bedroom dressed only in a negligee, it's clear someone very close to her is probably responsible. Since she didn't care about her many lovers' marital status, Frank and his partner Officer Lola Winters have their work cut out for them interviewing all of her lovers---not to mention their jealous wives---to find out who killed the much-sought-after Ms. Sole.

With Mating Season, another wry and wickedly suspenseful mystery, Loomis continues to be one of crime fiction's most promising stars.