L.A. CONFIDENTIAL

Born round the mid-19th century, detective stories replaced the deteriorating magic of the supernatural. Witchcraft, spells, ghosts and fairies were fading. Crime stories re-created mystery when mystery was waning: The dark forests of robbers and witches gave way to the somber thickets of criminal souls, the exoticism of unexplored wastes translated into the hunting grounds of native ogres.

John Connolly provides ogres aplenty. And witches, too. Gripping is a word that should be used sparingly. But Connolly’s first novel is a spellbinding book. Informed but uncluttered, it holds the reader fast in a comfortless stranglehold. “Every Dead Thing” is a tale of carnage and pursuit: of a demented and sadistic killer inflicting pain and fear, his trail of flayed and dissected corpses, the hurt and rage that he leaves behind; and of the retired NYPD detective who is his victim and his nemesis. Chock-full with local color, art history, travel notes, love and love lost, friendship and friends betrayed, gangsters good and bad, cops idem and many eloquent horrors, the plot ranges from Maine to Cajun Country, from Manhattan to New Orleans, distempering all it touches with malaise. As in real life, death brings no resolution, only grief. And a question: Why must nice characters hurt when evil ones die by their hand?

Lisa Scottoline provides as many nice characters as nasty ones, but her heroine’s endearing flaws can become irritating. Though just as politically correct, Scottoline is not, as ads for “Mistaken Identity” proclaim, the female John Grisham. Grisham’s narratives flow better than her choppy chapters and read more compulsively. And Scottoline has her own voice: more emotional, sensitive, susceptible, sentimental and, in the end, more tedious too. But she also gives us plenty of action: drugs and drug money, crooked cops, corruptible judges, sundered families, unworthy fathers and a lady lawyer challenged to defend an unpleasant woman accused of murder, who claims and appears to be her identical twin.

Scottoline writes legal thrillers, and “Mistaken Identity” is good on that score. The courtroom drama is fast and furious, and what goes on outside is more furious still. At 20 cents a page, it gives good value for your money.

A man much praised doesn’t need more encomiums; but T. Jefferson Parker deserves all he gets. “The Blue Hour” adds one more chilling thriller to a long, grim and scary list: ingenious, intricate, complicated yet credible, a real page-turner.

There are eerie kidnappings; media bottom-feeders; an odd brace of detectives; a serial killer who hangs, bleeds and guts his victims as if they were deer; and a suspect once convicted of a violent sex offense who has accepted chemical castration to obtain release, parole and perhaps opportunities to vent his twisted rage again. Within the crackling tale, a quieter current carries an unforeseen and ill-starred love affair, discussions of right and wrong, guilt and responsibility and comments on contemporary semantics (“virtual sucks”). There are leaks, leads, false leads and an express train of an ending.

The manic action takes place in and around Newport Beach (the author lives in Laguna Beach, nearby), which may be why Parker is the first writer I have seen who has American girls make statements that sound like inquiries? Quite right. But why endow one of the principal characters with the incredible moniker of Matamoros Colesceau, which reads more like a misprint than the Romanian name it is alleged to be?

Reading Rennie Airth and John Harvey after Parker emphasizes how different police procedurals can be in different countries. A Frenchman once remarked that none can stare for long at death or at the sun. Detectives condemned to contemplate extinction frequently differ nevertheless in the effect this has on eye and soul. All are burdened with memories, with superiors, with civilian kibitzers; but their conditioning, hence their mindset, are local. Americans are technical, organization-bound, hard-boiled; the British staid, civil, compassionate even when crusty.

When Airth sites his “River of Darkness” in the English countryside just after World War II, remorseless slaughter edges out Miss Marple-like detection in places with names like Upton Hanger and Rudd’s Cross. A demented killer has shifted the butchery of the trenches to innocent country homes that he leaves piled with corpses. Inspector Madden comes down from Scotland Yard. Helped by a beautiful local doctor, he clears the case and then escapes from a profession too blood-bespattered after years of war. Professional rivalries, benign British bobbies, heroes and merciless madmen come and go. The land goes on forever.

Seventy years later, the spurs of woodland have turned to brick, and Harvey’s criminal Midlands seem far less unfamiliar. There is incest; there are abrasive delinquents and guns on the street, where druggies and drug pushers make war; and Harvey, an accomplished stylist, provides fluent suspense. Single-parent families abound (“Walking arguments for bloody sterilization”), and so do their criminal offspring (arguments for the same and more). The English police continue to be more sensitive and benevolent. Inspector Charles Resnick of Nottingham CID is presented as a good cop bruised by the pain and suffering around him. Engaging despite his bruises, he loves jazz and cats, smokes fags, is getting fat on sausage sandwiches but wields a mobile phone with the best of them.

A convicted murderer has been granted compassionate leave to attend his mother’s funeral (hence “Last Rites”). Naturally, he escapes and murders more people before police corner him and shoot him dead. The police, remarks a psychotherapist whom Resnick meets at dinner, “didn’t need to take such extreme measures, surely? I’d love to know what you think.” Resnick apparently thinks it was time he left.

Authors make their best points indirectly. Only Connolly won’t beat about the bush. “We do not believe in evil any more,” he comments at one point. We drown it in euphemisms and explanations. “But there are those for whom we have no easy answers, who do evil because that is their nature, because they are evil.” Humans are the only animals who do not drive predators of their species from the herd.