Living by their wits

Frederick FORSYTH’S latest adventure roams from the killing fields of Vietnam to Bosnia, from Langley to Arabian emirates and the corrupt Caribbean south. His message is outlandish: that acts have consequences, intended and unintended.

Attorney Cal Dexter was once a much decorated Navy SEAL and has kept in good training. When a predator lures away his beloved daughter, plunges her into prostitution, then batters her to death, he pursues and liquidates the vermin. Then, since vermin pullulate unattended, he turns his attention to trimming them back. He occasionally suspends his legal activities, the better to serve justice as an intermittent “Avenger.”

Fans of “Day of the Jackal” will be pleased to find Dexter’s meticulously planned justiciary adventures unfold withForsyth’s diligent instruction in geography, history, politics and intelligence work. Dexter’s crucial caper concerns a Serb gangster and mass murderer, Zoran Zilic, who once operated under the shade of Slobodan Milosevic but got out before the Serb dictator imploded, to comfortable asylum in a murderous kleptocracy off the South American coast. His many victims have gone unavenged so far. But Zilic also has killed the idealistic son of a Canadian magnate who can afford to fund the Avenger’s complicated campaign to turn Zilic into zilch. Penetrating the Serb’s island defenses makes for gripping and athletic exploits and a triumphantly edifying finale.

Like every master, Robert B. Parker keeps several heroes in his stable. “Stone Cold” features not the voluble, wisecracking Spenser but a very different character: the terse, taciturn police chief of Paradise, Mass. Dialogue flows as spryly as ever but, where Spenser delights in verbal dexterity, the laconic Jesse Stone flaunts a no-nonsense style and pregnant silences. Here, he faces a string of apparently random killings, inexplicable, wanton, freakish and capricious.

Stone’s small police force is dedicated and untiring. But they take costly time to focus on the mortiferous slayers who, as we learn before the police, are self-absorbed lovers, sexually stimulated by the deaths they deal. While this improbable pair are run to ground, Stone negotiates steeps of solitude mitigated by snug trysts and heroic efforts to resist the call of the bottle. He also tends to other troubles in Paradise, including a schoolgirl’s rape by brutish fellow students, and advises the victim: “The law always talks about justice. We’re officially in favor of it. But if I were you I would want revenge.” Stone scours up a revenge of sorts: He abandons drinking and regains the love he’d lost. Not a bad score.

In Barry Maitland’s “Babel,” a senior professor on his way to deliver a lecture is murdered on the steps of his university in the docklands of London. His murderer escapes. Det. Chief Inspector David Brock uncovers death threats, fatwas, Islamic extremists, family feuds and academic discords. Jihad or personal rancor? A disturbed youth acting on his own or a rabid Islamist hoodlum looking to make a splash? When the simple case of murder links with another simple case of murder, it carries Brock and his team into rougher waters; they remain unfazed, or almost, while inquiries muddle on and the media buzz and fizz.

Maitland’s puzzle becomes more complex by the zigzag, but its rapids are a pleasure to navigate. The reading is easy, the pace deliberate, violence minimal, sexual encounters are elided, the large multiethnic cast is engaging and even the least amiable characters reveal redeeming features. English police, too, blunder through blurs of bigoted political correctness, but the plain language they use helps to turn out a reliable police procedural.

In Stuart Woods’ “Capital Crimes,” a crack professional killer is icing prominent right-wing personalities and his feats cannot be tolerated -- at least, not by the authorities they embarrass. He leaves no clues, no hint of his identity, so who is he and where to find him? The CIA is run by the president’s wife, a shrewd woman. The FBI is headed by a dolt but, fortunately, better men than he are on the case and the yarn is all about the slow, careful, complicated process of tracking the selective slaughterer and running him to ground.

Leaks, denunciations, false leads, press conferences and missed opportunities abound, as do dark and violent covert actions. Which is all right. The reader’s relish, though, hangs on the author’s sparkle and his discreet waggery. Fans of Woods’ sly pen will not be disappointed. *