You'd be a fool to miss out on these bestsellers

Agent X by Noah Boyd

Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Boyd's second thriller featuring Steve Vail, a Chicago bricklayer and former FBI agent, suffers from the same defects as its predecessor, The Bricklayer—a flat central character, a numbing abundance of dialogue, and too many improbable investigative epiphanies. Once again, Vail teams with beautiful FBI assistant director Kate Bannon in Washington, D.C., this time to investigate claims made by an informant known only as Calculus. An intelligence officer at the Russian embassy, Calculus says he know the identity of several Americans who are supplying Moscow with secret U.S. military information; he will dribble out the names—as long as the FBI coughs up ,000 per spy. Vail, meanwhile, has other ideas about how to find the treasonous U.S. citizens and squeeze Calculus for more information. In the course of a long and convoluted plot, Boyd, a former FBI agent, offers little about the inner workings of the agency or its investigative techniques.

Apple Turnover Murder by Joanne Fluke

Publishers Weekly

Cozy fans will welcome bestseller Fluke's charming 13th Hannah Swensen mystery (after 2009's Plum Pudding Murder). Hannah is working long hours at her bakery, the Cookie Jar, in Lake Eden, Minn., as well as dating two men, dentist Norman Rhodes and local sheriff Mike Kingston. Her personal life gets more complicated with the reappearance of Bradford Ramsey, a college professor with whom Hannah had a brief fling when she was a naïve graduate student. Hannah hopes ladies' man Bradford has forgotten the embarrassing episode. When Hannah winds up serving as a magician's assistant for a charity show, she has the misfortune to find Bradford, the show's host, backstage “stone cold dead.” With her usual wit and flair, amateur sleuth Hannah narrows down the list of suspects in Bradford's murder, but can she catch the culprit before she becomes the next victim? Scrumptious recipes include mocha nut butterballs and chocolate marshmallow cookie bars.

Electric Barracuda by Tim Dorsey

Publishers Weekly

In Dorsey's madcap 13th novel featuring vigilante serial killer Serge A. Storms (after Gator A-Go-Go), Serge gets engaged in a scheme cooked up by his faithful sidekick, Coleman, who hopes to attract tourists to Florida by offering theme vacations: "My first theme vacation: the ‘tourist fugitive.' You come down here and pretend to be on the lam." Those on the gleefully maniacal Serge's trail include a conniving lawyer gulled into thinking Serge has the key to Al Capone's lost treasure, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement task force, and Serge's personal Javert, the obsessive, dubiously lucid but insightful Agent Mahoney. Dorsey cheerfully rejoices in Florida's colorful history and in the triumph of absurdity and anarchy over law and propriety. His police are no better than Keystone Kops, while tempering his deranged protagonist's taste for complex murder is Serge's unerring ability to select worthy targets. An unnecessary final revelation aside, series fans will be pleased.