Two of these novels are the new installments of a series, while the third is a searing and brilliant social comedy, the newest chapter of Baxter’s bright literary career. Happy New Year, and happier hours of reading.

A Highway 59 novel, this latest from Locke is the third and final in the series - coming after Bluebird, Bluebird, and Heaven, My Home. Locke is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Set in East Texas during the first Trump era, our main protagonist is the retired Texas Ranger/detective Darren Matthews. It’s when his estranged mother, whom he hasn’t seen in over three years, shows up at his home that the plot thickens. She discloses the case of Sera, a missing black college student, who was a member of what used to be an all-white sorority at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches. Darren has Randie visiting when his mother, Bell, shows up; and readers of her previous Highway 59 novels will be cheering, hoping Randie and Darren end up together.

The investigation of the ‘non-crime’ leads Darren to Nacogdoches and the enclave of Thornhill, where Sera’s family resides. Here, the narrative goes in the direction of uncovering hidden secrets about the town, founded by two industrialist families who got together through marriage. You follow the money and find it leads to a lot of contributions and sponsoring of political figures, plus this occurs not only within Texas, but also with figures from other states. The themes of racial tensions, of flawed justice systems, of interest groups and patronage politics, plus that of chasing the truth even when it hurts you - they’re all present in this gripping story. What’s telling about this racially motivated storyline is how we aren’t talking of some distant past, of Texan history, but about today - how deeply rooted some of these issues are, and in what form they continue to persist.

Author of "In the Blink of an Eye," which was cited as a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and awarded a John Creasy, here is Jo Callaghan’s sequel to that illuminating, speculative, winner of a Crime Fiction novel. DCS Kat Frank and AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entity) Lock - the first AI detective, are back as a detecting team on the local British Midlands police force. As in the first installment, one is driven by instinct, while the other by cold logic. Kat Frank is a grizzled single mother veteran of the local police, while Lock manifests itself via a hologram, seen as a 30-something, good-looking African-British male of impressive stature. The conversations between the two will remind readers of Mr. Spock in "Star Trek" and how everything for Lock has to be literal and logical, with no real grasp of irony, sarcasm, or humor.

When the body of a man who has been crucified, with his ears cut off, is left on a mound within the city, that’s when the detecting starts in earnest. In the first book, Frank and Lock were assigned to cold cases, but now they’ve been assigned a live investigation. A second body appears, with his eyes plucked out, but also crucified, and a media frenzy occurs as talk of a serial killer emerges. In connecting the dots between the two killings, they stumble on the saying of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Say No Evil, and the team moves to prevent a third victim. A good reason for the success of the first installment was the chemistry (or lack of it) between Officer Frank and her AI Assistant Lock. This is further developed here, providing moments of sharp humor, amidst the police work, and the emotional weight of what is at stake. Callaghan makes us care for the members of Frank’s team, and even for the Lady Professor who developed Lock, and has to live through her own PR nightmare.

Winner of the PEN Malamud Award, this latest from Baxter has a divorced midwestern dad, who’s an insurance salesman and Sunday school teacher, as its main protagonist. When we first meet Brock Hobson, he’s in a medical center, and a cutting-edge medical test is offered to him. The claim of the people behind the Geronomics test is that it’s predictive, and the results that come in say he has a predisposition to violence, criminal behavior, and murder. And so now Brock has to explain these results to his ex-wife, the subcontractor she left him for, his two teenage kids who are exploring sex and sexuality, and his present girlfriend. As his children describe him as the most predictable, easy-going person, it’s going to take a lot of explaining when the events that follow point to a drastic shift in his demeanor and behavior, and seem to concur with the prediction.

If Dante Alighieri had his "Divine Comedy," Baxter has his Human Comedy; and his novels have wonderfully found humor in the mundane, and by positioning ordinary Joes as his ‘heroes’. This is a wonderful journey into the psyche of a man who wants nothing more than to get on with life and be the best person he can be under certain circumstances. That the world won’t allow him to pursue that dream is what takes up the narrative of this shaggy dog of a novel. It’s about family, about identity, about choosing the best people to love and fight for, while accepting those whom we have to love even if we didn’t choose them - and loving all of the above in the best way possible. There’s a cheeky breaking of the fourth wall by Brock as the narrator, and it works for me. While in essence, this could be described as a morality fable, it’s got a lot of deadpan humor working in its favor and is a satisfying weekend read.