The titular first essay is a perfect way into this almost dauntingly intelligent book, employing a few of the author’s signature gambits to winning effect. There are 13 numbered sections: How To Disappear, Ways To Disappear, What They Will Say, People Who Disappeared, Why You Are Not Famous, and so forth. Each of these is an exhaustive list of possibilities for that item, funny, provocative, relatable, vulnerable, cynical, and sobering by turns. This essay is one of the two most straightforward in the book, the other being the third, The Uber Diaries, a series of vignettes describing the author’s experiences as a rideshare driver after a big Hollywood project he had been involved in fell apart and left him disastrously overextended. All the terrible things one might imagine could happen to a driver at the hands of his riders do indeed happen, but lead to an epiphanic ending where the line between driver and rider dissolves. The next essay is much more conceptual or theoretical, titled On the Desire To Reject Narcissism: Notes Toward a Follow-Up Essay to “The Uber Diaries.” Possible openings for such an essay, numbered from 1 to 131 follow, though some are printed with strikethroughs and others only vaguely described, and some sections simply reprint poems by other people, among them Franz Wright, Fred Chappell, and Molly Peacock. Heady stuff. Subsequent essays contain autobiographical material from a painful childhood and a spiky writing career, plus detailed recountings of certain stories Minor is obsessed with, most importantly the fate of eight sailors in a 1968 sailing race. His favorite competitor: “Bernard Moitessier, the sailor who quit the race because he simply wanted to sail the seas.” It is poignantly evident that that’s exactly what Minor means to do with this book: quit the race, sail the seas. You don’t have to be as smart as he is to enjoy the ride.

After Dr. John McKenzie destroys the equipment of a fellow member, the wolf-watching group to which he and his long-suffering wife belong are glad to see him go, tired of his tirades. Then Lew Ferris, sheriff of the Loon Lake area of northern Wisconsin, gets a call about a couple of missing wolf watchers—the McKenzies—whom the state patrol thinks might be in her area. Lew calls part-time deputy Ray Pradt, fisherman extraordinaire and the best tracker she knows, to help in the search. Ray, who coaches a high school muskie fishing team, has other things on his mind—he’s furious that one of the members of his team has been threatened by someone demanding he cheat in order to give the man’s sports-betting business an edge. Turning his attention to Lew’s problem, Ray has a hunch the McKenzies are in Robideaux Forest, and he and Lew set off. Seeing that an old loggers’ cabin has been rebuilt and is now housing crates of high-powered weapons, Lew calls in a larger police presence in the hope of catching the gunrunners. Lew is in a long-term romantic relationship with dentist Doc Osborne, who shares her love of fly-fishing. His house is on a lake and across the road from Ray’s trailer, where Lew meets back up with the deputy, who has some new ideas about where the McKenzies may be. Sure enough, Ray finds them shot dead and partially buried, presumably by gunrunners who caught them near the cabin. When someone takes a shot at Lew through Doc’s window, it only spurs them on to solve the murder, catch the gunrunners, and unravel the sports-betting scam.

Dr. Gwen Griffith is no stranger to Dillynaidd, where she did her undergraduate degree. Now, having watched print journalism fade away, she sees no future for herself despite her star credentials, so she’s delighted to take up the offer from Dean Carolyn Montgomery, her old college friend, to return to the university. Upon her arrival, Ellis, her teaching assistant, escorts Gwen to her lovely faculty housing. Carolyn arranges a meet and greet with her fellow professors, all of whom seem happy to meet her—except Alice Rice, who expected to get her job. Soon after Gwen returns to her rooms, she hears a loud banging on the door, and when she opens it, Alice starts to say something and then falls on top of Gwen. When Gwen screams, Professor Rhys Davies arrives, but though they give Alice CPR, they can’t save her. She’s dead. The attractive Det. Gareth Jones seems suspicious of Gwen and questions if it was a natural death. As a long-time investigative reporter, Gwen is curious. So is Ellis, who wants to write a story that Gwen supports as a teaching exercise. Since Alice was mean to her students, the staff, and her fellow faculty members, the number of people who might have wanted her dead is overwhelming. As Gwen and Ellis take a deep dive into Alice’s past looking for clues, it’s clear that Det. Jones doesn’t approve, even though forensics has revealed that she was poisoned. When Gwen is followed and gets death threats, she knows she’s hit a nerve. Can she uncover the truth, and can her new friends help keep her alive?

When Lizzie Dowling, Queen Victoria’s Irish-born parlor maid, is found drowned near the Quarr Abbey ruins on the Isle of Wight, Julia, who happens to be vacationing there with her grandfather, examines the body over the objections of the local constabulary that the death was obviously accidental and a woman has no business messing with corpses. Julia, Scotland Yard’s first female medical examiner, doesn’t establish conclusively that Lizzie was murdered, but she does discover that she was four months pregnant. And when Lizzie’s younger sister, Brigid, who’s been summoned from Cork by Lady Susan Styles, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales, is strangled along the way, it’s hard to believe that both women weren’t killed by the same person for the same shadowy reason. Once his pursuit of criminal fugitive Edgar Romilly ends with an unexpected jolt that sends him back home, Richard is free to rejoin Julia to solve this new case. The path to a solution will lead through thieves, smugglers, gunrunners, multiple murders, and several acts of anti-English terrorism, rumored and actual. Sadly, it also leads though dozens of characters, some real, some fictional, some aristocratic, some impoverished, but very few of them memorable, before the secrets that link the Dowling sisters, the royal family, and the Troubles come to light with little detective work by Julia and not much more by Richard.

Juliet Capshaw may be heavily pregnant with twins, but that doesn’t slow her down; she’s still coming up with new delicacies for Torte, her bakery in Ashland, Oregon, and keeping up a social life with her husband, Carlos, and their neighbors. One of her dearest friends is Lance Rousseau, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, whose productions bring in hordes of tourists. Lance’s wedding to longtime partner Arlo is nearly foundering in the face of Lance’s ambitious plans. At the moment, the play on view is Perfect Crime, and behind the scenes, there’s a great deal of tension between the actors and their director, Kean Armitage, which Lance hopes will be mitigated by the fabulous cast party he and Jules are planning. Once Jules meets the actors, she’s surprised by the hostility surrounding Armitage, who harasses the women; feuds with his bitter soon-to-be ex-wife, Vera Armitage, who claims to be a reviewer; and insists on a method approach that’s turned his male lead into a stalker. Given the short notice, Jules and her staff are busy preparing food for the party, but it all comes to a screeching halt when Armitage is shot dead in a dressing room. Jules has already helped her stepfather, who’s the law in Ashland, solve a long string of crimes, so she’s ready to pitch in to help the police. After all, she’s already spent enough time talking to cast members to know there may be a surfeit of possible killers.