L.A. CONFIDENTIAL

We’re in a pretty pickle when hackers can gobble every bit of information that concerns us, from our Social Security number, to our next date; when brutal computer games convert from virtual to real; when malignant fantasies smear and scarify the world real people live in. That is one predicament Robert Andrews’ “A Murder of Promise” sketches, and that his two detective lieutenants, Frank Kearney and Jose Phelps, have to face.

The most senior homicide investigators in Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Dept., Kearney and Phelps confront an ingenious serial killer who stalks his prey on the Internet and dispatches them with cruel stab wounds, planning his moves and plying his gory trade with cool deliberation.

They have to endure a despicable commander who wants to be head of the homicide division but doesn’t want to deal with homicides, or offend the media, or roil his political bosses. They have to fight their way through enough paperwork to kill whole forests; past politically powerful witnesses; through hazes of politically correct jargon and law that has been enlisted in the service of lawlessness while they make haste before the killer strikes again.

Undeterred by the cold smells of death, they hunt down the psychopath and go home to feed the cat.

An eminent and knowledgeable Washingtonian, Andrews knows whereof he writes. His tale provides a bustling topography of the district, a perceptive profile of intra-police relations, a lusty description of malignant monstrousness. Last, but not least, all who distrust politics and, even more, politicians will enjoy this book.

Robert M. Eversz once worked in and around Hollywood. We can see what he thought of Tinseltown from the fact that he left it for Prague, where he makes his home in much the same spirit as W.C. Fields, who would rather be in Philadelphia. If he really lives in that broody city, he needs a strong sense of humor; and “Killing Paparazzi” exhibits plenty of that, though without much good humor.

Just released from prison, Nina Zero is danger on wheels: perilous to herself, to those she encounters and to those she pursues. But she creates and endures mayhem in an incandescently detached way: not just about the paparazzi and the working girls gruesomely slain around her, but also for the wretches who cross her and get crippled for it. In L.A.’s three-ring circus, Nina is the angry clown who turns torment into farce, suffering into slapstick, pratfalls into survival skills. Where Robert B. Parker’s Spenser is flippant, Nina’s choler smolders, just waiting to explode. And Eversz’s dark comedy verges on sadism.

In Julia Spencer-Fleming’s entry to the mystery stakes, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Clare Fergusson is the new priest of the Episcopal church at Millers Kill in upstate New York. As her welcome reception winds down, an abandoned newborn baby is discovered bundled up at the door of St. Alban’s. Soon, a young woman is brutally murdered. Fresh and fit from eight years as an Army chaplain, Clare joins the chief of police in search of explanations.

Her initiatives flutter local dovecotes and place her life in danger. But she is as tenacious as she is impetuous, knows how to tough things out and even learns to drive through “the bleak midwinter.” This is Spencer-Fleming’s first novel, and a very promising job it is. Very professional too: an attractive heroine as thoughtful about others as she is thoughtless about herself, a convincing male lead, original situations and an engaging tale.

Death, says an Arab proverb, is the midnight runner; and there is a lot of death in Jack Higgins’ latest of that title. A lot of drinking also (mostly Irish and most often champagne), a lot of violence, a lot of money and a lot of thrills. “Midnight Runner’s” predecessor featured a hugely wealthy Anglo-Arab clan, the Rashids, all of whose male members were wiped out by the end. Good riddance; but the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Kate, the family’s only survivor, now heads the Rashid bedouin tribe and the Rashid business empire. She is venomously determined to exact revenge on those who, provoked by the Rashids, had struck back with deadly force. Her quest for vengeance and the collateral damage that it strews around stir up old foes as determined as Kate. Recourse to the Law won’t do because you cannot rely on law when you are seeking justice. So rival jihads face off. Washington, Belfast and Irish pub country, London and the English Home Counties and the Arabian peninsula and its oil wells become the stage where skulduggery punctuated by wild action plays out. It’s a relief to find that, in the end, however, even when not quite sober, the protagonists in Higgins’ latest are more than a match for their foes.