In Martin Limón’s The Wandering Ghost, it’s the early 1970s and a female MP is AWOL from the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Or is she? Maybe she’s been kidnapped. Maybe she’s been raped and murdered. Nobody knows for sure, but Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom aim to find out. Oh, and while they’re at it, they’re looking into another soldier’s supposed suicide, a stripper on the run, an overactive black market and the wandering ghost of a schoolgirl killed by a speeding army truck.

The fifth in Limón’s Sergeants Sueño and Bascom military mystery series, The Wandering Ghost has been racking up some heady praise. The Wall Street Journal says it’s “full of sharp observations and unexpected poignancy.” The New York Times says “Limón writes with…wonderful bleak humor, edged in pain, about GI life.” Fans don’t usually bother with such flowery praise, they just gobble up the books as soon as they hit the shelves. You can meet Limón at today’s reading/signing. Maybe he’ll give out some clues about The Wandering Ghost’s power-packed surprise ending. 6:30 p.m. Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-524-8597 or visit www.murderbooks.com. Free.

Thu., Nov. 15, 6:30 p.m., 2007

This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2007.