Renee

There hadn't been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. Even where Wexford lived, higher up in Kingsmarkham, the waters had nearly reached the mulberry tree in his once immaculate garden.

On a summer night, an attractive woman hurtles north in a blue Peugeot with an address in her pocket, while, back in London, a desperate man leaves a late-night phone message on his brother's answering machine. By sunrise, the woman is found in her car, shot, execution-style, through the head.

Mma "Precious" Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, making her the only female detective in the country. At first, cases are hard to come by. But eventually, troubled people come to Precious with a variety of concerns. Potentially philandering husbands, seemingly schizophrenic doctors, and a missing boy who may have been killed by witch doctors all compel Precious to roam about in her tiny van, searching for clues.

Cavanaugh, a former member of Delta Force, is hired by a brilliant scientist named Prescott who needs protection from a drug lord seeking the highly addictive drug he has invented. At least that is what Cavanaugh is led to believe. After Cavanaugh trains the scientist in escape and evasion, the unthinkable occurs: Cavanaugh's team is viciously attacked and entirely wiped out - and Prescott seems to be in collusion with the attackers.

Under a Bangkok bridge, inside a bolted-shut Mercedes: a murder by snake - a charismatic African-American Marine sergeant killed by a methamphetamine-stoked python and a swarm of stoned cobras. Two cops - the only two in the city not on the take - arrive too late. Minutes later, only one is alive: Sonchai Jitpleecheep - a devout Buddhist, equally versed in the sacred and the profane - son of a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. and a Thai bar girl whose subsequent international clientele contributed richly to Sonchai’s sophistication. (Abridged edition.)

A movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. In a seemingly unrelated case, a loner is murdered, leaving the sheriff's department with no clues. One unsettling revelation after another leaves a retired FBI agent and an L.A. detective thinking they've unmasked a most frightening killer with almost inconceivable calculation.