The Rope, by Nevada Barr. Minotaur. 368 pages.

If you've ever wondered how park ranger Anna Pigeon got so tough, here's the answer. Nevada Barr fashions an engrossing backstory for her series character that opens with Anna, on the run from a broken heart and her life in the New York theater, taking a summer job helping out in a national park.

She starts off bitter and dark, but the layers of courage and dedication are added through her ordeal at the hands of a killer who strands her at the bottom of a pit, and the role of the park staff in helping her stop the killer before more young women die.

This is pure joy for a real fan, to see your hero in her embryonic state. We see Anna transformed by her ordeal and by the (to her, surprising) discovery of a fundamental goodness in people who have chosen a life of service in the national parks. Barr has outdone herself.

The Confession, by Charles Todd. William Morrow. 352 pages.

Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge and his ghostly sidekick, Hamish MacLeod, spend time in a hostile fishing village and a deserted manor house as they look for the truth behind a false confession.

Once again the mother-son writing team of Charles Todd takes us back to the years just after World War I, when the shell-shocked veteran Rutledge wrestles with the trauma of the Great War while trying to keep anyone from knowing that his former sergeant now resides in his mind and keeps up a running commentary on his investigations. A fine entry in a fine series.

All I Did Was Shoot My Man, by Walter Mosley. Riverhead. 326 pages.

Leonid McGill, the "formerly bent" private eye, tries to right a past wrong by un-framing a woman he helped frame in a robbery and starting her off with a little nest egg to get back on her feet after prison. Unfortunately, she's in the sights of some acquisitive types who still believe she was in on the robbery and knows where the money is, so Leonid has inadvertently put her in danger.

Walter Mosley gives Leonid a ponderous voice and blends generous doses of sex, world-weary cynicism and a tarnished brand of honor to create the New York that Leonid inhabits.

Mosley, whose other series have captured the black experience in earlier incarnations, now says through Leonid: "Race is no longer the primary defining factor of American life ...

"Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done."

Characters and story bear out this philosophy.