THRILLER

Bangkok Haunts

By John Burdett. Knopf, $24.95.

With a pregnant wife and a mother who runs a brothel, Bangkok policeman and practicing Buddhist Sonchai Jitpleecheep has enough going on in his world. But there's more to come.

In this latest installment of his tribulations, he finds himself watching a porn video that turns into a notorious snuff film, in which the woman is murdered at the end. To compound his problems, the murdered woman was a past lover of Sonchai's that he never really got over. Sonchai now finds himself in the middle of a ruthless scheme that plays off his obsessions as it threatens his life.

Final word: It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this the best thriller out this year. By turns gruesome, shocking and compelling, it can also be laugh-until-you-cry funny. Never miss a Burdett novel. Never.

CHILDREN

Diary of a Fly

By Doreen Cronin; illustrations by Harry Bliss. Joanna Cotler Books, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, $15.99, ages 4-8.

It must be the season for the misunderstood bug. Coinciding with such offerings as Martina the Beautiful Cockroach and the fourth sequel in Tedd Arnold's popular early reader Fly Guy series comes the irresistible Diary of a Fly. With the same nonstop wit as their diaries of a worm and spider, New York Times best-selling authors Cronin and Bliss reveal the true side of the pest we love to swat.

Readers learn that a fly is not so different from themselves: He's nervous on the first day of school (worried he'll be the only one eating regurgitated food at lunch); he hates his school picture (he forgot to have all his eyes looking in the same direction), and he's desperate for his own room (but with 327 siblings, it's just not going to happen). In the end, his wish is every human boy's: to be a super hero. But can a lowly fly reach such heights?

Final word: Each diary entry is as hilarious as the next and imparts fun facts about the lives of real flies. (Who knew flies could change directions in flight faster than humans blink?) Swatters everywhere will call a truce - at least until story time is over.

HORROR

Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire

By Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. Bantam, $25

"In the thick of the night," the narrator of this gothic tale tells readers, "only a madman would attempt to cross the ravaged No Man's Land that separates (Captain Henry Baltimore's) battalion from the Hessians." No surprise, then, that when Baltimore leads his men out of their trenches and through the barbed wire, they are mowed down by German machine guns. Baltimore, wounded in the leg he eventually would lose, is the only one who survives.

As the captain wakes, he thinks he's dreaming when he sees black birdlike beings feeding on the dead. Thus begins a plague of the undead that spreads across Europe and destroys everyone the wounded soldier holds dear.

Told in flashbacks by Baltimore's only friends and introduced by quotes from Hans Christian Andersen's somber story from which the novel draws its name, grotesque supernatural phenomena as metaphors for the horrors of war lead to a violent crescendo.

Final word: Mignola's stark black-and-white illustrations are an excellent complement to Golden's words in that rarest of supernatural novels: an original vampire tale.

Peter Mergendahl Jennifer Miller Mark Graham