Books in brief

CHILDREN'S

Lost & Found by Shaun Tan; Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic ($21.99)

Three fascinating works by remarkable Australian illustrator/storyteller Shaun Tan originally published separately in Australiabetween 1998 and 2001 -- "The Red Tree," "The Lost Thing" and "TheRabbits" (story by John Marsden) -- are published here withadditional new artwork and author notes in this wondrous book. (Tanwon an Oscar this year for the animated short made of "The LostThing" and the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children'sliterature.) Tan has a gift for expressing the deep emotionalinsights through mysterious, evocative, beautifully illustratedstories. "The Red Tree," inspired by his experience withdepression, uses fantastic imagery, of a small girl in a room filling with dark leaves, trudging on a grim city street in the shadow of a giant weeping fish ("darkness overcomes you"), wearing a diving mask inside a bottle against a somber seascape, dwarfed by bizarre mechanical backdrops -- when hope appears in an unexpected way. In "The Lost Thing," a boy discovers a mysterious red teapot-shaped thing with tentacles wandering through a bleak city andtries to find out where it fits in a world that values sameness."The Rabbits," which Marsden's note tells us was inspired by NorthAmerican Indian warrior Tecumseh, uses the true story of theecological disaster wreaked on Australia by rabbits brought by European settlers to dramatically illustrate the damage done to the land and native peoples by colonists. Tan's stunning landscapes and imagery are a marvel.

-- Jean Westmoore

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SUSPENSE

The Complaints by Ian Rankin; Little, Brown, 448 pages ($24.99)

In "Exit Music" (2008), best-selling Scottish author Ian Rankin called a halt to his series about Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus, who was approaching 60 years old, retirement age for a cop in Scotland. Because Rankin's novels had aged Rebus a year for each novel it was time for the cantankerous, hard-drinking detective to turn in his shield.

If Rankin is looking for another series character to take over where Rebus left off, he may have found him in Malcolm Fox, who makes his debut in "The Complaints." Fox is younger and not a loner like Rebus but just as conflicted about his life. Fox has five years of unsteady sobriety, close friends, a father he supports and a sister with whom he keeps close touch.

He works for Edinburgh's Complaints and Conduct, the Scottish version of Internal Affairs that investigates corrupt cops. He's just wrapped up a high-profile case of a veteran cop when he's asked to investigate Detective Sgt. Jamie Breck, a young cop who's been "fast tracked" for promotions but who may be dealing child pornography over the Internet. Fox has barely begun when he meets Breck at a crime scene -- the murder of Vince Faulkner, who is the abusive boyfriend of Fox's sister. Although Fox is, at first, using the pretense of friendship to investigate Breck, he begins to doubt that Breck is a pedophile. When Fox is suspected of killing his sister's boyfriend, he has to trust Breck both as a friend and a cop.

"The Complaints" shows Rankin in top form in his sturdy creationof Fox and Breck. As in his other novels, Rankin melds Scotland's history with the country's contemporary concerns. A nearly bankrupt property developer who may have committed suicide, an empty condo development and a complicated money laundering scheme illustrate how money woes seep throughout Scotland.

-- McClatchy Newspapers

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NONFICTION

Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors; Ecco Press, 246 pages, ($24.99)

A former copy editor at the Wall Street Journal offers a quirky meditation on the lonely pleasures of summers in a 7-by-7-foot lookout tower in a wild patch of the Southwest.

Every April, Philip Connors leaves his bartending job and hiswife in a small New Mexico town and heads for Apache Peak in theGila National Forest. He takes his dog, an old Olivetti typewriterand some stashes of bourbon and settles in for five months of professional mountain watching in a country where the view holds "no evidence of human presence, not one light to be seen."

He spends his days gazing, writing, reading and mentally losing himself in the million-acre vastness that stretches in every direction. His tools are simple: a penchant for patient observation, good binoculars and an Osborne Firefinder to plot the location of a curl of smoke lazily rising in the distance. A lookout's life is "a blend of monotony, geometry and poetry, with healthy dollops of frivolity and sloth. ... We are paid to master the art of solitude," he writes.

The Apache Peak tower is one of only a few hundred still staffedby the U.S. Forest Service, which in this era of instantcommunication has turned to other means of fire spotting.

The Gila helped pioneer a federal policy that is slowly movingthe Forest Service away from its traditional Smokey-Bear mind-setthat all wildfire is the enemy.

In the pine savannas of New Mexico's high country, the natural regime was one of frequent, low-burning wildfires that crept through the underbrush for weeks or months at a time. Connors keeps his eye on a couple of such fires while they do a leisurely cleanup job on more than 25,000 acres.

As the season unfolds he weaves in local history, field notes andthe story of how the Gila managed to stay so wild. The reader comes to know and like not just the Gila, but Connors, who grew up on a farm in the Midwest.

While his language sometimes overreaches, Connors has written a quietly moving love letter to a singular place.

-- Los Angeles Times