"Server Down"

By J.M. Hayes (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95)

"New River Blues" 

By Elizabeth Gunn (Severn House, $28.95)

"His Other Son"

By Ken Radon (Xlibris, $29.95 hardcover, $19.95 softcover)

It could be argued that Tucson itself — its social and cultural life, its politics, its criminal underbelly — is the star in each of these police procedural murder mysteries.

Admittedly, calling the wildly surreal "Server Down" a police procedural is a stretch, even with Benteen County, Kan., Sheriff English putting in erratic appearances. Hayes, whose fifth English novel this is, actually has an exposé of Tucson political shenanigans as his principal target. He finally gets through a vivid mix of the real and the unreal, computer games, Yaqui Indian celebrations, unscrupulous businessmen and rigged elections.

Former Minnesota resident Gunn, whose successful Jake Hines series takes place in Minnesota, has now transferred her attention to Arizona. And while Gunn gets in a few shots at Rio Nuevo, Tucson's Downtown redevelopment project, her principal story involves the grisly murder of a Tucson socialite whose corpse is found in a bed also occupied by a dead man who is not her husband. It's the job of Sarah Burke, an ambitious, hardworking Tucson Police Department homicide detective, to figure out what happened. Kirkus Reviews, a nationally syndicated source of information on new books, has written of Gunn's work: "What Ed McBain was to the big-city police procedural Gunn is to the small-town force." High praise.

Radon, a retired schoolteacher, is not in Hayes' or Gunn's league, and his historical and geographical grounding is fairly pedestrian. But he brings a nice writing style, a few lighthearted moments and a fairly clear sense of plot to a series of murders that begin in the small, unpretentious watering hole at Randolph Golf Course.

    

"The View From Frog Mountain"

By Rebecca Cramer (Imago Press, $14)

This moves a bit north and is another Linda Bluenight case. The intrepid former police pathologist and single mother, now teaching on the Tohono O'odham Reservation's San Xavier District, heads for Mount Lemmon to help an old friend open a bed-and-breakfast inn. The bodies start falling left and right, and as always, Bluenight reluctantly is pulled back into her old profession (at which she is very good).   

NOTES: Mark Adams and Tommy Bassett III, in "Just Coffee: Caffeine With a Conscience" (Just Trade Center, $20), tell the story of Cafe Justo, a Chiapas, Mexico, coffee cooperative, and tells how readers can contribute. . . . Barry S. Hirsch concludes his imaginative Sherman Elbert trilogy with "The Tie That Binds" (JSE Books, $29.95). . . . Shirley Dunn Perry has contributed a chapter, "Grandmother's Flowers," to "The Ultimate Gardener," a publication of the National Gardening Association ($14.95). . . . On April 20, Star columnist Bonnie Henry profiled Nunzio Addabbo and his book, "Ham Radio Heroes" (Third Millennium Publishing, $19.95). . . . On May 18, her column was devoted to Mary Ellen Zimmerman Barnes' memoir of her father, Tony Zimmerman, titled "The Road to Mount Lemmon" (UA Press, $17.95). . . .

If you haven't snagged a copy of "Desert Living Is Different! An Environmental Guidebook for Newcomers," keep trying. It was put together by kindergarten through 12th-grade students in the Southern Arizona Writing Project, under the sponsorship of the University of Arizona English department. In some locales, it's free to people who identify themselves as "newcomers." It rarely costs more than $5 for anyone.