In Weber’s thriller, a Canadian Mountie from the northern tip of Nova Scotia confronts her unsettling past while investigating local disturbances with potentially international implications.

The hamlet of Meat Cove gets its name from the carcasses that marauding Vikings once tossed into the sea at the northern tip of Cape Breton. Fundy Sutherland, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, lives a complicated life there with her 16-year-old daughter, Skye, and her married lover, Pascal. She also has a secret past as a Canadian Armed Forces “sniper with kills on four continents.” Her cruel mother, Geneva, who had a temper that “could melt a Coke bottle,” ran off on Fundy’s fifth birthday, leaving her alone with an alcoholic, unemployed father. After a well-off local family with three boys took her in, Fundy became fiercely competitive, excelling in sports and winning the Junior National Championship in the biathlon. Skye’s latest school assignment, requiring an at-home DNA test, sends Fundy into panic mode, as it could reveal aspects of her life that she’d rather stay hidden. In addition, a criminal whom Fundy helped to put in prison six years ago has been released—and he appears headed for Meat Cove. Adding to her worries are sightings of two Venezuelan boats, which may be carrying drugs. Weber’s novel is populated with colorful, sharply drawn characters—especially Fundy, a no-nonsense cop who describes herself as “like Dudley Do-Right and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, but instead of a horse, I ride a Taurus. And I wear a bra.” Also of note is Snuki Finsterblast, Skye’s science teacher: “the only woman in Cape Breton with a worse name than mine” says Fundy, and who dyes her long gray hair “black, but only once a year.” The author also appealingly shows Fundy’s relationship with Pascal to be loving and physical, marked by mutual acceptance of occasional absences and divided loyalties. The story moves quickly, shifting back and forth in time, with much of Fundy’s past revealed through passages she writes to Skye, detailing a life that’s both harrowing and exhilarating.

A crime drama that offers a winning combination of thrills, defeats, and hard-earned victories.

The author of two wiseacre, spiky-spoofing comic novels (The Secret Life of Eve Hathaway, 1985; Customs Violation, 1987) sends her heroine, here a secret agent, through a James Bond clutter of frantic antics, sex on the run, and memorable last-second escapes and rub-outs. The spy has a parallel career as a concert violinist, the mouth of early Joan Rivers, and a computer named ``Spot.'' Leslie Frost, concertizing in Germany, just happens to notice a box of something being hoisted up to a church steeple in Leipzig, and also notes the murder of a passing cop. By the time Frost, as ``Smith''—one of a rapidly diminishing group of Seven Sisters, a super-secret spy circle headed by a cool queen—has caught on to a computer gig whereby an ex-Soviet satellite is being harnessed for evil purposes, she'll have been bopping around Europe, New York, and Boston, fiddling and sleuthing. Among new acquaintances: a choirmaster in a hi-tech steeple studio; a Leipzig trade fair official who's undoubtedly a foe but who, in bed, sounds hitherto untuned depths; a gifted American sound-engineer, another major talent; and assorted punks and patsies. Then there are constants like ulcer-tortured producer Harry; gloom-whacked accompanist Duncan; an MIT computer maven; and manager/butler Curtis (with ``the great behind''). Throughout, there are also glimpses and sounds from (Smith bugged an auditorium seat) a sinister redheaded woman. Smith works hard, bugging, sleuthing, traveling in her black leather bike get-up, shooting forth killer computer codes, mystifying and terrifying. A virtuoso manipulation of hallmark preposterous super-spy novel elements—and it's very, very funny indeed.

A fourth novel from the author of Frost the Fiddler (1992), etc., with so many plot twists that not seeing the forest for the trees way understates the problem. It's the familiar good twin/bad twin (angel/devil) scenario, as solid citizen and chef Emily Banks and her irresponsible actress sister, Philippa, become involved in a wacky murder mystery with TV sitcom-esque impersonations of each other to spare. Set predominantly in Boston—with sojourns to Manhattan, New Hampshire, and LA—the main storyline, if it can be pinned down at all, is the search for a main murderer (there are subcategories). When Emily's husband Ross's business partner—architect and chronic womanizer Dana Forbes—drops dead at the restaurant where Emily has just begun working, her new boss doesn't think twice. But when the dishwasher bites it a few days later, Emily's fired for ``bad karma.'' Her previous boss, Guy Witten, with whom she'd been having an affair, gets knocked off, too, when he answers what he thinks is Emily's beckoning but is really the conniving Philippa's. Meanwhile, Ross has finally figured out that Emily never loved Dana (as he'd feared) but did love Guy, whose death was partly due to a tip that he, Ross, gave this particular killer. From this point on, characters drop like flies, and loose ends spring out like coils on an old mattress. Emily plays actress at a film preview; Ross has a one-night-stand with his long-suffering secretary; Philippa gets shot by a woman in a turban who's been popping up all over. Sculptors, monasteries, suicides, purple silk bikini briefs: By the time a pregnant Emily solves the crime(s) and uncovers the (related) secret of her and Philippa's heritage, the reader may well wish the entire cast had been poisoned in the opening scene. A head rush worthy of a Betty Crocker's Deluxe.

Concert violinist Weber’s sexy, silly fifth novel (Devil’s Food, 1995, etc.) continues the adventures of concert violinist/secret agent Leslie Frost, now investigating the steamy affairs of a lecherous US President to discover who killed a fellow spy. Frost, who calls herself —a two-bit narcissist who wished to die recognizable,— is a member of a supersecret corp of gorgeous female spies code-named after the Seven Sisters women’s colleges. Frost (code name: Smith) finishes a command performance before leering US President Bobby Marvel and then discovers the stiffening, nude corpse of blonde bombshell Polly Mason (code name: Barnard) in a sumptuous suite at the infamous Watergate Hotel. Among her possessions is a videotape of Mason having champagne-soaked bathtub sex with President Marvel, as well as an admission ticket to a fund-raiser at Ford’s Theater, where Frost finds herself surrounded by scheming Washington types, including the President, his hideously dressed First Lady, Paula, their doting his-and-hers press secretaries, Justine Cortot (in love with Bobby) and lesbian Vickie Chickerling (definitely not in love with Bobby), frustrated composer Bendix Kaar, the mysteriously epicene bon vivant Fausto Kiss, and brittle Senator Aurilla Perle, who is grooming herself to be the next vice-president after the current veep, dies of dengue fever. What should be a zesty, slightly skewed whodunit chilled with Frost’s delightfully bitchy put-downs becomes a tepid bog as Frost dodges arrows while chasing the vice-president’s pathologist brother Louis in Belize, falls for Fausto’s tragically sophisticated languor, and tangles with a man who resembles the President both in and out of bed. Tediously rococo plotting blunts the sly, overheated comedy of scheming dragon-ladies with great facelifts, and spineless mama’s boys who don’t know Brahms from Berlioz.

From Brown (Elle Woods, 2007) and Weber (Hot Ticket, 2000), an energetic farce skewering the lives of the rich and obnoxious.

The first 80 pages of this comic romp starring the very worst of high society is devoted to the absurdities of planning the wedding of the century. Mother-of-the-bride Thayne Walker is a day away from pulling off the multimillion-dollar fete that will make TomKat’s Italian wedding look like a cheap Vegas elopement. And Thayne is the woman for the job—the Dallas socialite has the precision (bridesmaids are required to walk down the aisle at 22 inches per second) and toughness of a five-star general. Pippa, the bride, is a bit lost in all the hoopla, but as a devoted daughter she’s happy to oblige. That is until fiancé Lance reveals he’s gay, forcing Pippa to call off the wedding at the alter—and then all Texas hell breaks loose. Beloved grandfather Anson dies on the spot and Thayne disinherits her daughter. While Pippa’s hiding out from the frenzied paparazzi, she learns from Anson’s lawyer that she is his heir (of one billion dollars), but there’s just one caveat: She has to earn a diploma. The will doesn’t specify college diploma, so she starts off on her journey of misadventure to earn a degree, tricky for a young socialite with skills limited to shopping and gossip. Driving school is a bust (although a trip to Wal-Mart for new clothes proves an enlightening experience) and matchmaking school proves equally difficult. When she enrolls in a rural clown college, she doesn’t imagine she’ll have to dance all day with Pushkin the bear (she’s happily rescued by Boy Scouts when a jealous elephant tries to kill her). Happily, Pippa may have found her niche at housekeeping school (after all, she can identify all of Waterford’s patterns at a glance). In exchange for a quick degree, she agrees to serve as majordomo to a Las Vegas socialite and in the process may bust a smuggling ring with the FBI and reconcile with her repentant mother.

Great, silly fun, guaranteed to be seen at a beach near you.