Now and then

When you read a historical mystery by Jason Goodwin, you take a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth. Like its predecessor, "The Janissary Tree," winner of the Mystery Writers of America's 2007 Edgar Award for best novel, THE SNAKE STONE (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25) is set in 19th-century Istanbul during the reign of Sultan Mahmut II and features the subtle sleuthing of Yashim Togalu, a eunuch with eyes and ears exquisitely attuned to the cacophony of life in his cosmopolitan world. But with the sultan on his deathbed after a 30-year reign, a deep unease has settled over the city, now poised uncertainly for a momentous historical shift. In such a setting, sudden violence is just part of the local color. Goodwin obliges with deadly assaults on a local vegetable seller, an old Greek book dealer, an Albanian waterman, a Jewish money-lender and, most interestingly, a French archaeologist whose search for treasure from an earlier era dramatizes the author's view of Istanbul as a city entwined in its own history. Like the Serpent Column in the Hippodrome, the origins of this writhing coil of humanity go back to before the Ottoman Conquest, even before the beginnings of the Byzantine Empire and Greek Constantinople. While Yashim acknowledges that "a city endures which also grows, forever adding new identities to the old," he finds himself digging deeper into the past to understand the murderous impulses of people who would reverse history to stunt such growth. The needless complications of the plot - which sees evil intent in everything from the journals of a learned Greek society to the induction rites of the watermen's guild - actually work in its favor by evoking the chaos of life in the ancient city that straddles the Golden Horn. Goodwin presents this in sumptuous detail, in scenes that take Yashim from the social heights of Topkapi Palace to the dregs of the docks, with a fragrant side trip into the spice market at the Grand Bazaar, source of the ingredients for the elaborate Ottoman dishes he serves his eccentric friend, Stanislaw Palewski, an ambassador of the now-defunct nation of Poland. Their erudite table talk is always lively, as are the conversations Yashim initiates with anyone who has a story to tell. These exchanges don't always have anything to do with the plot, but they provide the nicest kind of traveling music for that magic carpet ride. You couldn't ask for a more gracious introduction to the exotic world of Imperial Japan than the stately historical novels of I.J. Parker. Designed around an 11th-century provincial detective named Sugawara Akitada, these mysteries are saturated with details about the social milieu in which each investigation is set. ISLAND OF EXILES (Penguin, paper, $14) finds Akitada undercover on Sado Island, known for the penal colony that supplies slave labor for the local silver mines. It takes him a dangerously long time to discover who poisoned the colony's highest-ranking prisoner - the emperor's treasonous half-brother - and then framed the governor's son for the crime. But in disguise as a convicted murderer, Akitada is quick to learn the value of a man's life in a place where "a human being is nothing but a candle in the wind." Miyuki Miyabe's new mystery, THE DEVIL'S WHISPER (Kodansha, $24.95), illustrates some modern-day refinements on the punishments doled out to criminals in ancient Japan. When a Tokyo taxi driver is jailed after hitting and killing a woman with his cab, public opinion rapidly turns against his family. The persecution of a 16-year-old nephew living with the family is especially ugly; the boy is already being tormented at school because his father disappeared from his government job after embezzling public money. Miyabe's forte is suspense, and here it's built around the strange behavior of young women being driven to suicide. But the peculiar fascination of the story lies in its acute observations of the way masochistic shame and guilt play into the social conformity so inhibiting to the Japanese identity. Archer Mayor goes out of his way in CHAT (Grand Central, $24.99) to impress us with the ruggedness of native Vermonters. His series hero, Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, thinks the mountain topography and long, snowy winters have something to do with nurturing a local character at once "hardy, independent, self-sufficient and sometimes a little cranky." And when his brother and their invalid mother struggle back to health after a suspicious car crash, Joe has new respect for Yankee grit. But even the toughest of his taciturn neighbors has a soft spot when it comes to family, a theme Mayor delicately probes after the murders of two strangers open parental eyes to the dangers awaiting children in Internet chat rooms. It's cases like this that make Vermont winters seem longer and colder. Fair warning to Spenser fans: Robert B. Parker's normally funloving private eye sits on his mitts and turns unusually introspective in his latest adventure, NOW AND THEN (Putnam, $25.95), a condition brought on when he identifies too closely with a client. Not only is Dennis Doherty betrayed by his wife in a way that compromises his job with the F.B.I., but the poor guy is also murdered. And so is his adulterous wife, duped by her treacherous lover. This is all too much for Spenser, who gets drunk and broods about the time his beloved Susan was also lured away by a sinister lover. "Doherty has to matter to someone," he tells her, meaning it's time to settle his own scores. When that's done, maybe he and Susan can have a serious talk about the future. The sleuth in Jason Goodwin's crime novels is a eunuch living in 19th-century Istanbul.

If ever there was an argument for selective abridgment, this audio version of Parker?s latest Spenser outing is the poster child for it. Spenser, Susan and everyone else uses "I said" or "she said" so often that it soon becomes laughable. It?s also unnecessary, considering Mantegna?s vocal talents easily let listeners know exactly who is talking. His Susan and Hawk sound different enough to let us in on the secret, and his Spenser has the humorous crackle we?ve come to expect. With villains that are equally differentiated, Mantegna keeps the book moving and excels at Parker?s smart dialogue. But even the most loyal Spenser addicts might have to swallow a chuckle because of the attribution repetition. Simultaneous release with the Putnam hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 20). (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.