There’s a rumor abroad in the land...

There’s a rumor abroad in the land (perpetuated by columns like the one that appeared in March of ’96 in this newspaper by Robert A. Jones) that Southern California has lost the fascination it once held for readers of mystery fiction. I suppose this thesis might have some validity if we were to ignore the popularity of Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Joseph Wambaugh, Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, Robert Crais, T. Jefferson Parker, Gerald Petievich, Robert Ferrigno, Jan Burke and so forth. But you get the idea. Actually, the evidence seems to suggest we’re in the midst of a renaissance of West Coast crime fiction. And Michael Connelly is certainly doing his part.

In a relatively short period of time, Connelly, a prize-winning journalist who was a police reporter for this paper, has established himself as one of the new masters of the mystery genre. “Trunk Music” is his sixth novel, the fifth in a series about LAPD homicide detective Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch. (Last year, his “The Poet” introduced a new series, featuring a Boulder, Colo., reporter named Jack McEvoy.) The Bosch books are a clever combination of police procedural and the literary equivalent of film noir, with Connelly’s experience on the crime beat helping to create an ultra-realistic, dark and shadowy system of justice, mired in corruption and politics, in which the disenfranchised, disenchanted Bosch tries vainly to light one little candle.

Usually, it’s one of his own private dark corners that he’s trying to illuminate. In “The Last Coyote,” for example, Bosch investigates the murder of his mother. But in “Trunk Music,” Connelly lightens up on his hero by giving him a murder case that doesn’t include any personal investment (well, maybe a little).

Back on the force, and enjoying the rare privilege of working for a commanding officer whom he can respect (and, even better, who respects him), Bosch is presented with the body of a shady film producer, discovered in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce. The victim’s Las Vegas ties lead the detective to that gamblers’ paradise, where he does battle with both mobsters and his uncooperative brother lawmen. And, by chance (here’s that personal element), he crosses paths with Eleanor Wish, a woman he once loved and lost (in his debut novel, “The Black Echo”).

Connelly’s prose is vigorous and clean and he makes splendid use of cop-speak, real or imaginary, like the book’s title, which refers to the placement of a dead body in a car trunk. (I was particularly taken with the phrase “in the wind,” to describe a suspect who has evaded capture.) He also capitalizes on his fondness for surprising plot turns, which he manages to bring off without sacrificing credibility. Even with a final scene that relies on a coincidence so unlikely it somewhat undermines the novel’s mood of gritty realism, this is another strong entry in a very popular series.

Throughout Bosch’s previous outing, “The Last Coyote,” his hillside home was hanging by a thread, thanks to the Northridge earthquake. In “Music,” the structure has been restored and is as fresh as paint. Dianne Pugh’s heroine, Iris Thorne, should be so lucky. “Fast Friends,” the third novel in which financial consultant Thorne’s life is touched by sudden death, takes place just after the quake has hit, leaving her well-appointed high-rise apartment in disrepair. It’s the least of her problems.

Sleek, smart and refreshingly bitchy, a rare trait in series leads, Thorne has stayed on the financial fast-track by keeping ahead of the curve and eschewing her blue-collar past. But in “Friends,” the East L.A. chickens come home to roost with the suspicious death of the mother of a childhood pal. And she is forced to dredge up memories hidden for decades, ranging from her father’s desertion to the brutal and fatal beating of a suspect by a couple of overzealous cops.

Usually, and of necessity, the plots of sequels tend to be more formulaic and less ambitious the further one gets from the debut novel. Apparently no one has explained this to Pugh, who uses “Friends” to subject poor Iris to an amazingly inventive and wrenching number of personal trials and tribulations. Fortunately, she’s tough enough to persevere. Any heroine so ambitious and quirkily original that she’ll sneak peeks into her associates’ lunch bags for clues to their home lives deserves our undivided attention.

Another idiosyncratic series heroine, Gloria White’s Ronnie Ventana, must contend with her own ghosts of the past in her fourth novel, “Sunset and Santiago.” The title refers to a San Francisco intersection where Ventana’s parents died in a car crash 20 years ago. She’s holding an anniversary vigil at that spot when the foggy night is disturbed by two men disposing of a corpse in the nearby shrubbery. If you think the corpse is unconnected to the death of the Ventanas, you must be unfamiliar with White’s skill at making all the pieces fit in her crime-filled jigsaw puzzles. Wait no longer to join the game. Ventana is just as hard-boiled, softhearted and witty a sleuth as crime fiction’s leading ladies, Kinsey Milhone and V. I. Warshawski, and she has a slight edge on them thanks to a legacy from her society thief (!) parents: She can pick a lock faster than the Saint and Raffles combined.

Lawrence Block’s 13th book about private detective Matthew Scudder, “Even the Wicked,” is the “My Dinner With Andre” of mystery novels. Nearly all of it is talk and nearly all of the talk is entertaining. Block, a clever and extremely gifted author, playfully places Scudder at the center of three complicated cases, two involving a serial killer who appears to be using miraculous forces to dispatch an assortment of despised victims (child molester, mob boss, etc.), the third a seemingly senseless slaying of an AIDS sufferer. That’s a full plate for any shamus, but Block makes Scudder’s job even tougher by having him come up with the solutions the old-fashioned way. Like such legendary sleuths as Hercule Poirot or Nero Wolfe or even Sherlock Holmes, he must unmask the guilty by exercising brain over brawn.

Since neither he nor we--the readers--have any firsthand knowledge of the murders, the detective’s method is to chat up people who can provide him with what Sherlock referred to as “data.” Fortunately, Block’s dialogues sing with slang and color and humor as well as with information. And Scudder’s logical method of explaining the inexplicable is as satisfying as it is unique.

Finally, television producer-writer Lee Goldberg (“Diagnosis Murder,” “Spenser: For Hire”) has written a second mystery about movie studio sleuth Charlie Willis. As does the first (“My Gun Has Bullets”), “Beyond the Beyond” concentrates more on tickling the funny bone than on chilling the blood. Populated by the boozy, loony, sex-obsessed denizens of network television, this Willis caper focuses on dark doings prompted by the rebirth of a crazy cult sci-fi series of the ‘60s. The novel’s satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next “Star Trek” convention.

Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find it hard to crack a smile at the author’s gag-strewn prose. Likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble. Especially when Goldberg goes on a roll, describing such potential TV series as “ ‘Cain and Abel,’ the hilarious misadventures of two gay bouncers at a strip club frequented by zany ethnics, Generation X’ers and Estelle Getty.” Or “ ‘Con Artist,’ a magical anthology with a social conscience about a young convict whose jailhouse tattoos come alive and help people in need.” Aaron Spelling, eat your heart out.

****

TRUNK MUSIC. By Michael Connelly . Little, Brown: 383 pp., $23.95

FAST FRIENDS. By Dianne Pugh . Pocket, 306 pp., $22

SUNSET AND SANTIAGO. By Gloria White . Dell: 314 pp., $5.50

EVEN THE WICKED. By Lawrence Block . William Morrow: 304 pp., $23

BEYOND THE BEYOND. By Lee Goldberg . St. Martin’s: 320 pp., $23.95

****

DICK LOCHTE will participate in a panel on mystery books at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books today at noon at UCLA.