Sisters in crime

For those in the N.J./N.Y. area, two of the brightest new voices in crime fiction will be hosting a launch party/signing event Tuesday, July 7 at 6:30 p.m. at New York's Mysterious Bookshop. Appearing will be Megan Abbott, author of the new BURY ME DEEP (Simon & Schuster), and Theresa Schwegel, whose novel LAST KNOWN ADDRESS (St. Martin's Minotaur) is just out as well. Both are Edgar Award winners (Abbott for Best Paperback Original for last year's QUEENPIN, and Schwegel for Best First Novel for 2005's OFFICER DOWN) as well as being lovely and charming. The Mysterious Bookshop is at 58 Warren Street in Tribeca, a short walk north from the WTC Path station. (212) 587-1011.

Out of the past

I can't say enough good things about Megan Abbott's new novel, THE SONG IS YOU, just out this week. The follow-up to her Edgar-nominated DIE A LITTLE, it's another period noir, this one set in Hollywood in the early 1950s and revolving around the real-life disappearance of actress Jean Spangler. But Abbott's central character - and the novel's wounded hard-boiled heart - is a fictional former-journalist-turned-Hollywood-press-agent named Gil "Hop" Hopkins, whose guilt and alcoholic self-loathing plunge him first-hand into the mystery. Period L.A. noirs aren't exactly rare, but this is Abbott's world and A SONG IS YOU inhabits it fully. It's also graced with some of the best dialogue I've read anywhere in a long time.

Abbott and Edgar-winning author Theresa Schwegel are also touring together over the next month or so, including two appearances in New York this week; Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Partners & Crime in Greenwich Village, and Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at The Black Orchid Bookshop on East 81st Street between First and Second avenues.