New Mysteries on the Shelves (5)

Looking at the new mysteries downstairs (with the newest fiction books) I ran across two titles with political themes but in very different places and times. And it is a presidential election year so if you can not get enough politics from the newspaper, TV, etc.--then there is more...

The first is Broken Heartland: a Mad Dog & Englishman mystery by J. M. Hayes. It is set in the present day U.S. midwest with a sheriff's election as the focus. Running for re-election, Sheriff English of Benteen County, Kansas, has a tough contest with a born-again Christian candidate using his family against him as a political issue. Matters nosedive for English, however, with a series of sensation events. First, a deputy crashes into a school bus of area teenagers with the Benteen teen choir during a vehicle chase. After the accident, the bus driver mysteriously vanishes. Meanwhile, Benteen would have to play catch-up with all those issues later as he investigates a shooting at a local school. This is the fourth novel of the "English mystery" series. The book is 229 pages.

The next book is a historical mystery set in Egypt after World War I. The Mark of the Pasha : a Mamur Zapt Mystery by Michael Pearce is the sixteenth of this long-running series. Gareth Cadwallader Owen (known as "Mamur Zapt" or head of the secret police) is busy confronting possible bomb threats in Egypt as relaid by his operatives. This police work also proceeds his big safety detail assignment of a visiting major European delegation to the capital. The book is 200 pages.