Stuck at home this summer?

You have two options: You can sit around and pout. Or you can pick up a book and experience an exotic place - all from the comfort of your armchair.

Mystery lovers know that a good whodunit is one of the best ways to visit faraway locales. In the hands of a skilled writer, you can soak in the flavor of a new place as vividly as if you were sitting in a gondola, gliding down the Grand Canal. And you'll find nail-biting suspense in the process - without mussing your clothes or watching your back.

Today, mystery critic Jane Dickinson brings you her travelogue-style assessment of three new mysteries. Read on for an intriguing trip.

And here's the best part: no nasty airplane food required.

Instruments of Darkness

By Robert Wilson (Harcourt, 352 pages, $14)

• Exotic locale: West Africa, including Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, Ghana and western Nigeria

• Plot in a nutshell: Englishman Bruce Medway is a fixer who handles payments and problems for traders along the Gulf of Guinea coast. He has a girlfriend from Berlin named Heike who turns up occasionally from the aid project she's running in the north of Benin. She's there to help Medway count the money from a deal that seems slightly fishy, especially when a couple of henchmen turn up looking for trouble.

When Medway undertakes a search for a missing compatriot, the corruption he finds from Benin to Togo to the Ivory Coast is almost as sticky as the unrelentingly hot West African weather. Violent and macabre scenes flicker against a dangerous background of political instability and corruption as Medway crosses borders to find his man, and save Heike from a madman.

• Snippet that best shows flavor of the locale: "I went to see a friend of mine who was a sergeant in the Sureté to see if any dead bodies had washed up on his desk. He told me there were lots of bodies found in the lagoon that morning, but no white bodies had been found anywhere in Lomé yet. He grinned at the word 'yet.' When I asked who was responsible for the bodies in the lagoon, he drew a finger over his lips and told me not to ask that question anywhere in Togo."

• Most intriguing thing learned about locale: As if West Africa didn't already have enough graft and corruption, expatriates trying to make a fast buck dirty the roiling waters.

• Most off-putting thing learned: No matter what passport you're carrying, you don't want to antagonize the faceless bureaucrats who run things, and make their fortunes, behind closed doors.

• Best moment for vicarious pleasure: "The lights were back on in downtown Lomé and the place was full of music. A shop selling cassettes had set up some speakers on the street and for half a mile nobody was walking without a wriggle or a jerk. Three girls with snack food in large aluminum bowls on their heads stood together and bobbed up and down and turned around in time."

• Character you'd most enjoy meeting: Medway himself, slightly dissolute but tough and, probably, honest.

• Character you'd least enjoy meeting: Clifford Harvey, but you'll have to wait until the end of the book to find out why.

• Armchair suspense factor: (on scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most suspenseful) 5.

• Should readers make this trip? Overall rating: A - recommended for those who like their mysteries tough and violent as well as exotic

Little Indiscretions

By Carmen Posadas (Random House, 320 pages, $23.95).

• Exotic locale: Madrid and the Costa del Sol, with a glamorous South American author as your tour guide.

• Plot in a nutshell: The story opens with the death of Nestor Chaffino, a chef who caters for the well-to-do of Madrid, whose body is found in a walk-in freezer at the summer mansion where he's working. The rest of the book spins back over the days before his murder to reveal just how many people had a motive to lock the door on the mild-mannered cook.

Secrets past and present seem to hover around the innocuous chef, and connections among a variety of characters who gather for a party Nestor is catering at a summer mansion coalesce into murder.

This quirky and entertaining mystery won a top award in Spain and went on to be translated into several languages and sell a half-million copies in Europe.

• Snippet that best shows flavor of the locale: When the art dealer Teldi goes to Madrid's opulent Palace Hotel for an interview with an art magazine, Posadas sets the scene: "The Rotunda of the Palace Hotel has been featured in innumerable photographs as the calm and discreet backdrop for interviews with all manner of famous people. . . . Famous athletes and legendary actors, left-wing intellectuals and right-wing politicians (moderately right wing, of course): at some point they have all chosen this cozy yet well-illuminated space, unique in all Madrid, not just because the photos turn out well but also because it is one of those places that has its own significance. It adds the following message to a profile piece: I, ladies and gentlemen, am someone who appreciates quality but disdains ostentation, who is not averse to comfort so long as it is accompanied by a hint of cleverly simulated decadence."

• Most intriguing thing learned about locale: Since Little Indiscretions focuses on the interior landscapes of the characters rather than Madrid or the Costa del Sol, the reader learns that Spain's middle class struggles with a lot of the same personal issues - marital fidelity, ambition, unwanted lusts, rebellious children - that Americans face.

• Most off-putting thing learned: See previous item.

• Best moment for vicarious pleasure: Peeking in at a party as "thirty-three of the world's most original and important art collectors," each an expert in the niche he or she pursues, gathers for an evening of sumptuous food and conversation.

"A curious observer would have been struck by the bewildering diversity of styles on display that evening. . . . Despite her name, Miss Liau Chi, the famous collector of ghost stories, seemed to have stepped out of a novel by Wilkie Collins (rather than a plane from Hong Kong). The three 'Dickensiana fetishists' looked, respectively, like an overweight boxer, a severe Breton matron (in the mold of Becassine, from the old French comic books), and more appropriately, the living image of Mr. Squeers, the stingy teacher in Nicholas Nickleby."

• Character you'd most enjoy meeting: Nestor Chaffino, the gentle chef, who really didn't deserve to be locked up in the freezer.

• Character you'd least enjoy meeting: Ernesto Teldi, the self-satisfied art dealer who hides his connection with the military rulers of Argentina who made people disappear.

• Armchair suspense factor: 3

• Should readers make this trip? Overall rating: A- - for those who like murder stories that are clever rather than graphic.

A Noble Radiance

By Donna Leon (Penguin, 277 pages, $6.99).

• Exotic locale: Venice

• Plot in a nutshell: A farm field reveals a body that may be the remains of the heir of one of Venice's most prominent families, kidnapped two years ago and never found. The case comes to Commissario Guido Brunetti, a good cop in a system rife with self-interest, who reopens the investigation, poorly done at the time of the kidnapping, to learn all he can about the 21-year-old victim and his family.

This is not the Venice of tourists, of gondolas and fabulous architecture, but a city where people live with their families and fix dinner together in their ordinary apartments in buildings we would consider remarkable and antique. Brunetti traverses Venice to talk to anyone who knew the victim, taking us along the bridges and sidewalks and over the Grand Canal.

• Snippet that best shows flavor of the locale: Brunetti meets his father-in-law, a member of Venice's nobility, for lunch in a small restaurant. The owner asks if they would like wine.

"Do you have that Chardonnay your father makes?"

"It's what we drink ourselves, Conte, but we usually don't serve it."

She saw his disappointment, so she added, "I can bring you a carafe."

"Thank you, Valeria. I've had it at your father's. It's excellent."

She nodded in acknowledgment of this truth, then added, as though it were a joke, "Just don't say anything about it if the Finanza comes in."

". . . No wonder this country is an economic cripple," the Count said with sudden fury. "Best wine they make, and they can't serve it, probably because of some legal nonsense about the alcoholic content, or because some idiot in Brussels has decided it's too similar to another kind of wine made in Portugal. God, we're ruled by morons."

• Most intriguing thing learned about locale: Most middle-class Venetians go just about everywhere on foot, at least in this story.

• Most off-putting thing learned: The canals of Venice aren't what they used to be: "When (Brunetti) was a boy, the canals had undergone a perpetual process of cleaning, and the waters were kept so clear that people could swim in them. Now, the cleaning of a canal was a major event, so rare that it was greeted with headlines and talk of good city management. And contact with their waters was an experience many people might choose not to survive."

• Best moment of vicarious pleasure: While walking through the city, Brunetti stops at a pet store to see a mynah bird he has noticed before.

"The metal cages were already hung outside the windows of the pet shop. Brunetti drew closer to see if the merlo indiano was still there. Surely that was it, up in the top cage, feathers black and gleaming, one jet eye turned towards him. Brunetti approached the cage, leaned forward and said, 'Ciao.' Nothing. Undaunted he repeated, 'Ciao,' careful to draw the word out to two syllables. The bird hopped nervously from one parallel bar to the other, turned, and regarded Brunetti with the other eye. He glanced around and noticed that a white-haired woman had stopped . . . and was giving him a very strange look. He ignored her and turned his attention back to the bird. "Ciao," he said again. . . . Disappointed he turned away, smiling weakly at the woman, who stood still, staring across the campo at him.

"Brunetti had gone only two steps when, from behind him, he heard his own voice call out, 'Ciao,' the last vowel much prolonged, in the manner of birds."

• Character you'd most enjoy meeting: Brunetti's wife Paola, a professor of English literature. She bribes her son and warns her husband in advance to get them to eat the first ravioli the Brunettis' daughter has ever prepared - complete with doughy pasta and burnt stuffing.

• Character you'd least enjoy meeting: Brunetti's boss Patta, an officious Sicilian bureaucrat, although it's marvelous to see how Brunetti deals with him.

• Armchair suspense factor: 4

• Should readers make this trip? Overall rating: A- - another writer to try if you enjoy the international mysteries of Andrea Camilleri and Michael Dibdin.

Jane Dickinson writes mystery reviews weekly for Weekend@Home. She lives in Littleton.

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