W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton. "Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue." With that intro, Grafton sends her now-iconic private eye Kinsey Milhone off on her 23rd adventure, investigating two seemingly unrelated deaths - one the murder of a disreputable PI, the other a homeless man apparently dead from natural causes but with Kinsey's name on a piece of paper in his pocket.

The only disappointment here is that Grafton is running out of alphabet letters. Kinsey Milhone is one of the most appealing detectives - female or male - in contemporary fiction, and she has remained consistently true to her beliefs and her lifestyle choices over three decades. Fans of hers will be delighted by W Is for Wasted while wondering "what's next?" after X,Y, and Z.

Never Go Back by Lee Child. Jack Reacher returns, which is good news for all of us who have grown to know and love the former military cop - the quintessential loner who metes out justice on his own idiosyncratic terms. In this book, Reacher has traveled to the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP, to meet in person the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, who was an intriguing voice on the phone in a previous book. Unfortunately, it isn't Turner behind the CO's desk, and Reacher (as is to be expected) finds himself thrust into a series of escalating perils that lead to a jailbreak and a cross-country flight.

Unlike Tom Cruise, who played our hero on the big screen, Jack Reacher is a big, imposing figure who rarely starts fights but even more rarely loses them. But what makes Reacher such an interesting character is not his brawn but his brain. Author Lee Child is a master of creating seemingly inexplicable situations and clues that Reacher alone is capable of interpreting, and it is the solving of these puzzles that provide much of the enjoyment of the Reacher stories. Never Go Back is no exception - enjoy.