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'Phantom Prey'

By John Sandford (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $26.95)

We've become friends with Lucas Davenport in John Sandford's 18-novel series about the rough-and-tumble ex-jock who dispatches headline-level criminals in the Twin Cities. And just as with old friends, we have the tendency to overlook the flaws in Davenport's personality.

In Sandford's latest, "Phantom Prey," we are once again lured in by Davenport's quick wit and friendly banter. We love Sandford's breezy style and gift for character descriptions. We are impressed by the endless supply of smart — but not smarter than Davenport — criminals with no conscience.

After a while, though, we tire of our friend's ability to make everything look so easy. Then there's Sandford's habit of showing us his hole card a little too early in the hand. And we roll our eyes and wonder: Would Davenport really talk designer socks with the governor?

In "Phantom Prey," Davenport wades into the Twin Cities' Goth scene to find the killer of Frances Austin, the daughter of a well-connected businesswoman who begs Davenport to help unravel the mystery of her disappearance and likely death (there's blood on the walls, after all). Davenport, as we've come to expect, reluctantly lets himself get dragged into the investigation and, as we've come to expect, his insights, effort, assumptions, occasionally uneducated guesses and twists of dumb luck blaze a trail that a cadre of investigators failed to find.

— The Associated Press

'Man vs. Wild: Survival Techniques From the Most Dangerous Places on Earth'

By Bear Grylls (Hyperion, $25.95)

In these days of global warming, rising oceans, monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires, the most dangerous place on Earth could be right where you are. Bear Grylls, a former British Special Forces member, lives life on the edge, climbing Mount Everest, crossing the Arctic Ocean in a small inflatable boat, surviving trips into the jungle and across deserts.

Now he wants to help you do the same.

Grylls hopes his book could save your life one day if you end up in any of the situations he's survived. Just remembering the priorities of survival he lists — protection, rescue, water and food — could make a big difference if you are one day dumped in a circumstance in which your wits will mean the difference between survival or perishing.

The book is full of practical advice on making fires, finding your direction by using a stick or wristwatch, predicting weather and tying knots. Finding food includes such things as edible plants, insects and grubs as well as fish and small game.

You will learn about everything from catching rainwater to consuming elephant dung, which is a useful source of water.

'Frames'

By Loren D. Estleman (Forge, $23.95)

Valentino is a movie archivist at UCLA, but his business card reads "film detective." His job: tracking down prints of old Hollywood movies before they deteriorate and are lost forever. As "Frames" opens, Valentino has just sunk all of his savings, and then some, buying the decrepit Oracle Theater in the hope of restoring it to its Roaring '20s glory.

As he and a couple of buddies poke around the basement, a wall collapses, revealing a hidden room. Inside, the least interesting thing is the human skeleton.

Here, protected from the elements for decades in the cool, dry basement, Valentino finds a stack of canisters containing Eric von Stroheim's 1925 masterpiece, "Greed." A testament to von Stroheim's towering ego, the original film ran eight to 10 hours, although no one could be exactly sure because MGM had sensibly cut it to two hours for theatrical release. The rest, it had been long assumed, had been sent to the incinerator.

As the canisters in the hidden room reveal, the assumption was dead wrong. The find is historic, but there is the little matter of that human skeleton. Valentino calls the police and then spirits the canisters away to the UCLA film lab before the authorities show up.

But when the skeleton proves to be a murder victim, the police get curious about what has been taken from the hidden room, and threaten to arrest Valentino unless he turns over the "evidence" to them.Valentino knows that once the film is exposed to the elements, it will deteriorate rapidly. So he and his buddies set out to solve the murder themselves before the police raid the film lab and seize "Greed."

That's the premise of "Frames," the 60th book by the prolific Loren D. Estleman. The novel is something of a departure for Estleman, whose previous work has consisted of crime novels, critically acclaimed Westerns, and a gritty series tracing the criminal history of Detroit."Frames" is more of a puzzle mystery reminiscent of the work of Agatha Christie, with Valentino in the "Miss Marple" role of amateur sleuth.

Although the book might disappoint fans of Estleman's hard-boiled novels, this well-crafted book could win him an entirely new audience. Estleman first introduced Valentino in a series of short stories for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and promises that "Frames" is the first in a series of novels featuring the "film detective."