Summer's hot reads -- 21 books for the beach

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

Carte Blanche

by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster, June 14)

The actors portraying 007 are always changing, so why not the authors? Deaver (“The Bone Collector”) is the fifth to follow Bond creator Ian Fleming. Bond, in his 30s here, is working for a super-secret Brit intelligence outfit called the Overseas Development Group — his MI6 liaison is Ophelia “Philly” Maidenstone. And he has carte blanche to use any mean necessary to keep England safe. With just five days to unravel a massive terrorist plot, Bond’s travels take him to Serbia, London, Dubai and Capetown. Plus, we finally learn a little more about the superspy’s parents.

Colin Douglas Gray

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The Ranger

A Quinn Colson Novel

by Ace Atkins (Putnam, June 9)

Atkins, of Oxford, Miss., has been given the task of continuing the late Robert B. Parker’s Boston-set Spenser series. Meanwhile, he’s written the first book in his own new series. When Army Ranger Quinn Colson returns home to rural Mississippi from Afghanistan, he finds a place he barely recognizes. His uncle, the county sheriff, killed himself, Colson’s told. But the facts don’t seem to add up. And in getting to the truth, he comes across rampant corruption, trailer-park meth dealers, skinheads and more. And this tough, hardened Army vet is just the man to deal with it.

Smokin’ Seventeen

A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich (Bantam, June 21)

Long before Snooki became a household name, Trenton bounty hunter Stephanie Plum was the Garden State’s best-known Jersey Girl. This time out, Stephanie’s got love and death to deal with. While corpses keep turning up in the empty lot next to Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, her family and friends urge her to chose between her local-cop boyfriend Joe Morelli and her bad-boy security pal Ranger. Meanwhile she fears that she may wind up in the lot next door.

The Keeper of Lost Causes

by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton, Aug. 18)

Billed as Denmark’s No. 1 crime writer, Adler-Olsen is also making his American debut with the first in his Department Q series. After a shooting nearly killed him and left a partner dead, Copenhagen police Detective Carl Mork is depressed and demoted to a basement office where he heads the new Department Q, for cold cases and lost causes. There, Mork takes on an old high-profile missing person’s case.

The Hypnotist

by Lars Kepler (FSG/Sarah Crichton Books)

Elsewhere on the Nordic crime front is the American debut of the Swedish crime-writing couple Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, who use the pseudonym Lars Kepler. There’s been a triple homicide in icy Tumba, Sweden. A young boy who witnessed the murder of his family is the only survivor. Detective Joona Linna brings in Dr. Erik Maria Bark to hypnotize the boy, who is in shock, to get some answers.