Library Picks: Latest Novels from J.A. Jance, Tess Gerritsen and More

The latest batch of new arrivals at are a group of crime thrillers, with a little bit of escapism from Barbara Delinsky thrown in for good measure. This week's Library Picks are:

Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance

A girl is strangled to death and captured on a video that appears on the cell phone of the teenage grandson of Washington State's governor. So the governor calls in her good friend J.P. Beaumont, of the attorney general's Special Homicide Squad to discover what really happened. Soon it goes beyond putative teenage murderers to conspiracy in the state government.

Escape by Barbara Delinsky

Emily Aulenbach is thirty, a lawyer married to a lawyer and working in Manhattan. An idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse, except she spends her days in a cubicle talking with victims of tainted bottle water — and she's on the bottler's side.

Infernal Angels by Loren D. Estleman

Detroit private investigator Amos Walker is hired to recover HDTV converter boxes stolen from a retailer whose shop also does vintage resale business. Before long, the case turns old school: both a suspect and the man who lost the boxes are murdered, and Walker ends up working with both the local police and the feds.

Monument to Murder by Margaret Truman

Times are tough in Savannah for former cop and current PI Robert Brixton, so when he agrees to take on a 20-year-old murder case, he figures he has nothing to lose. It's not long before the trail leads him deep into the corrupt underbelly of Savannah's power elite and right into the lap of a secret government organization that's been offing "troublesome" politicians for decades. The cold case heats up when he joins forces with former attorneys Mackensie and Annabel Lee Smith to investigate the organization and the murders they committed in the name of patriotism.

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli is already at the crime scene when medical examiner Maura Isles arrives on the Chinatown rooftop. Rizzoli's gut says they're on the trail of a twisted predator and when a monkey hair is found on the body and other clues point Rizzoli and Isles in the direction of the fabled Monkey King.

To check out any of these books or movies, visit the library's website and reserve your copy straight from the online catalogue. Make sure you come back to Birmingham Patch next week, to see what else is new in the stacks.