L.A CONFIDENTIAL

Battered brides, miscarriages, drug addiction, adultery, incest, murder, suicide, remorse, revenge, numerology, mortgages, loan sharks and enforcers, friendship and illusions, slaughter of ewes and rams, of coyotes who prey on the flocks, of debtors and debt collectors, of villains and victims, of hurters and those who’ve been hurt. A generous gentle giant, a mother exasperatingly hung up on an exasperating daughter, a marriage cracked, patched, shattered, finished off. A long-lost cousin resurfacing with Cheshire Cat effects: not much grinning, but lots of unsettling appearances and disappearances. Above all this hovers the ghost of wrongs long past that echo through the present.

Michael Kimball’s “novel of suspense” demonstrates that bucolic Maine harbors as many sordid situations as it does tourists. Family problems become police problems, and the police, as is only fair, develop family problems of their own. One of these facilitates the final resolution, which is about the only satisfying resolution in the book. But Kimball delivers the suspense he promises, a somber atmosphere of uneasiness and terror, the blemished characters and the lurid thrills. And then a grim comeuppance.

Move on, in “Rough Draft,” to a nutty go-getter of the FBI, Helen Shane; a nonchalant underachieving agent of the same company, Frank Sheffielf; and a macho senator bent on revenge for his daughter’s grisly murder. All hunt for Hal Bonner, the psychopathic hired gun of the Cali cartel who ambushed aforesaid daughter while she skied, then strangled her, opened her chest, took her heart in his fist and crushed it. That’s the way the mentally challenged Hal dispatches all of his victims, who are countless, and the way he will probably treat Hannah Keller, a cop-turned-mystery writer who, Hal hopes, will lead him to J.J. Fielding, a shadowy financier on the lam with millions that the Cali goons think belong to them.

Hannah, a single mother, is divorced from a nasty Norwegian spouse who pursues their young son, Randall, a sulky, mixed-up compuwhiz whose mental health is fragile because of murky doings he witnessed as a child. Hannah knows nothing about Fielding, but Hal thinks she does because that’s what Shane wants him to think, and that’s what the FBI’s scenario--involving lots of operatives and computricks--has been devised for. While trailing Hannah, Hal finds and nearly strangles Misty, Fielding’s abandoned daughter who hates her father. Instead, they fall in love as, in due course, do Hannah and Frank Slaughter. The FBI will be left with egg on its face while big public men congratulate each other on the successful closure of a case actually solved by lesser characters. I hope all that is clear.

It was not to me. There are so many characters in “Rough Draft,” so many things going on, that I lost track. All I really remember is Hannah’s description of her alter ego, a character in her latest thriller, who has a smartass mouth, renegade view of justice, no reluctance to pull the trigger when there’s need or “to overstep the boundaries of the law if that’s what it took to nail the thugs and psychos who managed to elude traditional law enforcement.” Great! For the rest, conclude that senators who throw their weight about should be slapped down smartly, FBI hotshots should repress lickspittle impulses, crackbrained murderers should be drowned at birth (or as soon as possible thereafter). And that young people are humdingers at managing computers.

James W. Hall’s story line’s a mess, but Miami local color is just great, and he kept me reading, wishing that the villains be wiped out or, at least, hurt badly.

A lot of readers may welcome the idea of a lawyer being snuffed, especially one who (in Mae West’s words) has climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong. Better still, two lawyers, as happens near the opening of “Special Circumstances.” But there are good lawyers too, and in Sheldon Siegel’s book, they stand front and center. One is a hesitant philanderer and liar who’s otherwise OK but is accused of murder. And there are his defenders, a companionably divorced pair, resourceful, sexy, relentlessly determined to get their friend off the hook.

The “special circumstances” of the title are code for the death penalty that prosecutors ask for Joel Friedman, an associate at Simpson & Gates, the premier San Francisco law firm, who has been accused of gunning down the two victims (perhaps because he didn’t make partner). Mike Daley, just fired from his partnership at S & G, squares off against the city’s newly elected district attorney, who has also just left the firm that is glad to lose him. “As an attorney,” Mike comments on the district attorney, “he’s careless, lazy and unimaginative. . . . As a politician, however, he’s the real deal.” That, happily, won’t get the overconfident upstart far when faced by the decent Daley and his scratch team.

As we read on, particulars of the trade are piquantly presented, the investigation unfolds with allure, blow-by-blow trial details are appetizing, the narrative runs at a good clip. “Every lawyer I know is writing a novel,” Mike laughs after the jury delivers judgment upon Joel. The self-deprecating Siegel has evidently joined the ranks of novel-writing lawyers. All I can say is that his first effort turned out pretty good.

Steve Martini’s “The Attorney” is another legal thriller, another procedural, another court case in which evidence is extracted line by line, which doesn’t help the suspense but swells the number of pages. Jonah Hale, a simple, decent man who has become a lottery millionaire, tries to do the right thing because he thinks that the law protects people who are in the right and is surprised to find that doing right is not enough, may even get one into trouble.

Jonah is distraught because his granddaughter and ward has been kidnapped by her silly, drug-addicted mother. Then, a homophobic feminist militant is bumped off, none too soon, and he’s accused of her murder. “The law doesn’t work,” he complains. “That’s the problem.” It is indeed, and that’s what lawyers are for: to unravel the tangled skein their kind has helped to weave.

Enter Paul Madriani, Martini’s “Attorney” of record, who has made a killing in a wrongful death civil case, plucked the insurance company for $8 million and been left with a tidy nest egg in fees “even after taxes.” So Paul moves from Sacramento to San Diego, where he will be closer to his ladylove, Susan McKay, takes on Hale’s case and is caught in thickets of deceit and danger. Charges of child abuse are brandished, drug trails are followed, evil drug lords and dark minions loom and, this being Southern California, driving takes up an awful lot of time.

In the end, Madriani successfully guides the case to closure where both the missing granddaughter and the menacing villains are concerned--but not without Susan tweaking the evidence. Which means that Paul will split up with her: probably a good thing for Susan, who doesn’t need a squeamish champion who shies from transgression, though the cause be good. Sanctimony may work in court, but veraciousness ill becomes lawyers for whom deception is the better part of valor. It is out of place in legal legends aspiring to realism.