Coffin Road

This is the 2nd book I've read by prolific Scottish author Peter May (see also my post for Black House). He has written several series, but this is among his body of stand-alone novels. The plot for this book, set in the outer Hebrides, is a timely one--the precipitous decline in bee populations around the world. However, we don't know that until we are thoroughly wrapped up in the mysterious protagonist, whose name we aren't sure of, because he has been in a boating accident and lost his memory. People know him as Neal Maclean, a writer delving into the unsolved disappearance of 3 lighthouse keepers from a nearby island over a century ago. He can't remember anything about his life or the people around him, not even the woman in the neighboring cottage with whom he has apparently been having an affair. His dog knows him, but there seem to be no clues to his identity in the cottage he's been renting for the last year and a half. No ID. No e-mails. No pictures. He's told everyone he's writing a book but there's no evidence of this in his computer. All he finds is map of the island highlighting the Coffin Road--an ancient path followed by pall bearers. When someone breaks into his cottage and tries to kill him, the need to recover his identity becomes a mater of life and death.
There are two additional parallel storylines. Teenager Karen Fleming is still trying to come to terms with the apparent suicide of her father 2 years earlier. As she struggles to deal with her mother's plans to move on and remarry, Karen wants to talk to anyone who knew her father. But after she contacts a work colleague of her father's, he dies in an automobile accident--maybe. Karen becomes increasingly convinced that her father's death was not a suicide, and maybe he isn't even dead. Meanwhile DS George Gunn is sent to investigate the murder of a man at the same lighthouse where the keepers disappeared. The stories are connected of course, but you will be led on a totally believable but devious chase to find out how. Part scientific thriller, totally engrossing mystery--well worth the read. Reviews from The Guardian, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly

The Dirt on Ninth Grave

A numbered series by Darynda Jones, which I will now need to go back and read, starting with First Grave on the Right. The series is based on the character, Charley Davidson, who is a part-time sleuth who can see dead people and parallel worlds. However,  you would not know about Charley if you started with this book because Charley woke up in an alley behind a diner several weeks ago with no memory of who she is and now goes by the name Jane Doerr. She is waiting tables part-time in the diner and her fellow waitress is Cookie, who keeps calling her Charley for some inexplicable reason. Also there are a bunch of diner "regulars" who seem to have taken a special interest in her, including the hot body Reyes Farrow, who is the target of all the local female lust in the town of Sleepy Hollow (yes, THAT Sleepy Hollow). Because "Janey" can see other worlds, she knows that Reyes is not altogether human--she sees an aura of flames and smoke around him, Also, she can see a demon sleeping curled inside one of her favorite customers, Mr. P., who is usually accompanied by the ghost of a dead stripper. Mr. P.  doesn't know about all the company he keeps of course, so Janey is worried about him. Then she has more things to worry about when she begins to suspect that the owner of the antique store next door, Mr. Vandenberg, and his family have been taken hostage by terrorists. But how to get help for them without endangering them further? And then there is the local police officer, Ian, who thinks Janey is his girlfriend, even though she has not encouraged him. As the book goes on, it emerges he is stalking her in a major and scary way. So Janey has friends and enemies--living and dead--and she is afraid to tell anyone what she can see that nobody else can. This was a real romp, and although I don't have much patience for the bodice ripper style of description that pops up periodically, Janey is an enjoyable character, and I found myself as anxious as she was to find out who--and what--she really is.