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Cover of &quot;Jump the Gun&quot; by Zoe Burke. Poisoned Pen Press.

Some recent mysteries deal with war and how it -- and its aftermath -- affect lives. Wars are violent attempts to settle political differences, and they always leave a lot of collateral damage.

"The Hanging of Samuel Ash," by Sheldon Russell (St. Martin's Press, $25.99, 320 pages). Railroad bull "Hook" Runyon finds the body of a young man swinging from a wigwag signal. On the corpse, a medal indicates Samuel Ash was a hero during World War II, which has just ended.

Hook, who has a stubborn streak, doesn't think it right to bury a hero in a pauper's grave, so he takes it upon himself to find the victim's family.

His boss, however, has other ideas: Runyon should to track down a group of pickpockets who are preying on passengers. He also sends Hook an educated young man who wants to learn about detection. Watching Hook "educate" him is the funniest part of the book.

But the investigation into Ash does not go smoothly. There's trouble with the union, and then trouble with an orphanage in Oklahoma.

Fortunately, Hook, with his love of first editions and his mutt Mixer, thrives on trouble. And we get to enjoy the results.

"A Spider in the Cup," by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Press, $26.95, 346 pages). The appearance of a Joe Sandilands book is always welcomed by fans of this intelligent and gripping series. The early books, in which World War I veteran Sandilands served in India, set a high standard.


Now it is 1933, and Europe is suffering economically. Sandilands, an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, is supposed to protect an American politician who is a confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt. The commissioner must also work with a former colleague, now an ambitious naturalized American.

And looming over everything is the specter of Hitler, as people wonder whether his ascendancy in Germany is a good or a bad thing.

Although there is a mystery here, complete with corpses and pieces of corpses, the book is more a thriller with international ramifications. And it is talky. While Sandilands tries to figure out whom to trust -- and how far to trust them-- everybody keeps talking. For my taste, a little less history on the origins of World War II would have been preferable.

"A Question of Honor," by Charles Todd (HarperCollins, $25.99, 320 pages). We move to an earlier war in this, the fifth story in the chronicle of Bess Crawford, an English nurse serving on the World War I battlefields in France. The story is dramatic and moving.

While always well-written, and laden with historical details, this series has faltered, as Bess' movements -- both nursing in France and on leave in England -- have restricted her detecting. But in "Honor," that is not a problem.

The issue here revolves around a crime committed years earlier, when Bess was a child in India, where her father was a colonel in the British army. A lieutenant in Col. Crawford's regiment was accused of murder, but escaped and was reported killed while on the run.

Circumstances during the war convinced Bess that the issue actually was more complicated. So she begins to poke around, hoping her findings will make her father, who has long been troubled by the case, feel better. As it turns out, the story involves something that's seldom little talked about: what happens when expatriates send their children back to England to be educated. Let's just say that not all of them have a good experience.

The story is compelling and the background quite interesting. The war appears to be winding down; one wonders what the intrepid Bess will turn to next.

"Jump the Gun," by Zoe Burke (Poisoned Pen Press, 186 pages, $24.95). Departing from our war theme, this debut mystery focuses on Annabelle Starkey, who loves movies so much she wishes her life would turn into a romantic comedy.

When she meets Mickey Paxton, she impulsively accepts his invitation to go to Las Vegas, where all hell breaks loose. There are cops chasing them, but are they really cops? There are gangsters. There's a little old lady on the lam.

The story has all the ingredients of a classic screwball comedy, except that it doesn't work very well. You have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief in this kind of set-up. Otherwise, you don't have a soufflé, just scrambled eggs.
