Crime fiction roundup

“Murder on the Left Bank” by Cara Black, Soho Crime, 288 pages, $27.95

Continuing her marvelous tour of Paris with her 18th Aimee Leduc mystery, Cara Black finally makes it to the Left Bank. Aimee swore off homicide cases after the murder of her father, a onetime cop from whom she inherited her private investigation agency. Now that she has a 10-month-old daughter, this single mother is even more loath to deal in crimes most foul. But she can’t resist getting dragged into a case that may have ties to her father. The victim is a lawyer acquaintance’s nephew and assistant, who was asked to deliver to the city’s chief prosecutor a dying accountant’s notebook documenting the money laundering deals he cut for cops, politicians and businessmen. Aimee fears the now-missing notebook will expose corrupt dealings by her father. When the nephew’s girlfriend turns up dead and indications are that a longstanding crime syndicate was responsible for both murders, Aimee and her baby are at risk. “Murder on the Left Bank” boasts all of Black’s trademark charms: deft plotting, sharp dialog and colorful sights. We spend time in a tapestry factory as well as art galleries and cafes. But as always, it’s Aimee’s genial, upstart personality that carries the day.

“Can You Hear Me?” by Elena Varvello, Quercus, 242 pages, $22.99

An acclaimed Italian poet, Elena Varvello makes her English-language fiction debut with this layered psychological mystery, which is part serial killer novel and part “Summer of ’42.” Set in 1978 near the provincial town of Ponte in northern Italy, “Can You Hear Me?” is about a 16-year-old boy, Elia, contending with two life-changing events on the cusp of manhood: his once-loving father’s descent into paranoia and delusion and Elia’s attraction to Anna, the mother of his new friend Stefano. We know from the start that the never-named father “took a girl into the woods” in his beat-up van, which was equipped with a foul mattress and which he drove around for hours. A missing boy is subsequently found dead near a mine. Looking back at the summer of ’78 from 30 years later, Elia still has problems processing what happened with his father and Anna, a woman with a mysterious past whom he wanted to hold “to get rid of that darkness and of my father.” With its rich atmosphere, claustrophobic sense of place and haunting poetry, “Can You Hear Me?” creates mysteries within mysteries. No sooner do you think you have a handle on one mystery than another one throws things back into the shadows.

“A Million Drops” by Victor del Arbol, translated by Lisa Dillman, Other Press, 640 pages, $19.95

At more than 600 pages, this Spanish mystery is difficult to overlook. But for those who had this May paperback original go under their radar, “A Million Drops” will be a happy discovery. The book opens in Barcelona, where scuffling lawyer Gonzalo Gil learns that his sister Laura, a police detective, died of an alleged suicide. This after she killed a Russian mobster who had murdered her 6-year-old son. In investigating his sister’s death, Gil goes up against a lethal crime network. Jumping back to the 1930s, the novel tracks the odd history of his father, Elias, who went to the Soviet Union as an engineering student eager to contribute to the progress of the communist motherland, only to be arrested and tortured on charges of treason and sent to Siberia. After fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Elias leads the fight against fascism. With its large cast of characters, shifting timeline and multiple perspectives, this is a work of deep complexity. But del Arbol keeps the pages turning even as he probes the compromised souls of his characters — and their fractured families.