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The series of legal thrillers set in the Pugliese city of Bari, by Gianrico Carofiglio, depend more upon the voice of the central character, Guido Guerrieri, than on plot or mystery--fortunately Guido is fascinating. He's a lawyer who's not too certain about his profession but comfortable in his life, his city, and his relationships with co-workers, his ex-wife, and his evening companion, Mr. Punchbag (Guido is a former boxer who keeps his hand in both in the gym and with his in-home punching bag, with which he sometimes carries on one-sided conversations). In the new novel, he begins by discussing with a police friend a recent scare caused by the false diagnosis of a fatal illness. But the shadow of that experience is quickly set aside when a judge who is a former law-school classmate approaches him about a suspicion that the judge is being investigated for corruption. Guido accepts the case, and a double plot ensues. While Guido goes through the labyrinthine Italian legal sys...

I enjoyed Lisa Brackmann's China-based series of postmodern thrillers, but I've also been waiting Getaway , set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Getaway is a pure noir thriller about an innocent abroad, a widow whose husband turns out to have been a crook, and whose getaway to a resort town leads her into a breathless getaway of a different kind. impatiently for a sequel to her The sequel has finally arrived: Go-between , and I hesitate to say anything at all about the plot because the twists and turns start immediately and carry on until the final pages. Most of the book is set in Houston, and Texas is an appropriate setting in many ways, not least because some classic noir (including some of Jim Thompson's stories) has happened in Texas (the fictional as well as the actual state). Go-between features a range of topics and backdrops, from a northern California riddled with marijuana dealings of legal and illegal sorts, airplanes (also a factor in Getaway ), for-profit prisons a...

The power of the series: the authors’ creation  of one of the most distinctive  characters in contemporary fiction. My review is Here .  @LAReviewofBooks