Hot on the mystery trail

After Raymond Chandler, Georges Simenon and lead pencils, James Lee Burke is God’s great gift to social historians -- especially historians of that atypical wonderland called Louisiana, a place full of violent, driven, intrusive corruption; drive-through daiquiri stores; blues and swamp pop; lowlifes who don’t pull their punches; and tourists who come to see a world that no longer exists. Yet bits of that world well lost soldier on in “Last Car to Elysian Fields” (Simon & Schuster: 352 pp., $24.95), which is about entrepreneurs and horse breeders, murder, fishing, depression, dark rememberings, slaughterous lawmen, lawless porn producers and the junkies and perverts panting to strip before cameras. It’s also about Dave Robicheaux, Burke’s resilient cop, and his sidekick Clete, their friends, their foes, their blunders through the late summer rains of New Iberia and New Orleans, the crimes and secrets that they scarce conceal and Dave’s angry pain over the loss of Bootsie, his beloved wife.

Dave and Clete are good guys trailing those responsible for murders past and lawlessness present. Action never flags, suspense never ebbs, Dave never gives in to the spirited call of the Jim Beam he has forsworn. He simply wonders whether God is saddened by the madness of the children Creation left on Earth -- not considering that if there’s a God and if she cares, the madness that whirls about us might just be one of her whims.

With “Mr. Paradise” (William Morrow: 304 pp., $25.95), Elmore Leonard has turned out another thriller as shallow, savvy and seductive as we expect from him. The Michigan metropolis hums with homicides, gang wars and drive-by shootings that damage the street drug business and frighten off crack-house habitues. So a creative lawyer thinks up a professional hit-man service that uses bad guys to off bad guys, while steering suspicion away from the drug masters. Unfortunately, in the spirit of American enterprise, the hit men branch out and hit the Mr. Paradise of the title and his chippy.

This brings in the Detroit police and homicide detective Frank Delsa. Four years before, in a department store parking lot, Delsa shot two brothers, convicted carjackers on lifetime probation trying to jack an old Honda with 90,000 miles on it. Instead of cheers, this precipitated a wrongful-death suit asking $30 million for excessive use of deadly force. The court threw out the suit, but the brouhaha has held him back since. Worse, it has made him reluctant to use his Glock. Now he nudges the action on, cavorting through the cast of wits, dopesters, homeys, strippers, hookers and just plain folks. Frank links up with Kelly, a model, friend and look-alike of the call girl offhandedly slaughtered alongside Mr. Paradise. A crucial witness of the home invasion that offed Mr. Paradise, Kelly is pursued by the hit men wary of her testimony, by the Paradise aide who hired them for the job and, in another spirit altogether, by Delsa.

This is not a thrilling thriller. Action is often telegraphed or suspended for digressive scenes; writing is deliberately flat to convey the flavor of relations, the tone of thoughtlessly businesslike wet work. Men are men; worse luck, women are ugs; a guy gets shot for taking $28 off a dresser; a wit testifies in what sounds like rap. And, as in rap, it’s the lyrics that do it. You can’t beat Leonard’s lyrics. Just sniff ‘em up.

In Lee Child’s “The Enemy” (Delacorte: 394 pp., $25), we turn to Soviet Russia. The collapse of Communism there was not discomforting for commissars alone or for Russians left to the tender mercies of their kleptocrats. The U.S. military had serious reason to worry about losing the foe whose menace fed their budgets. Child’s latest is about the tensions, plots and planning these painful prospects produced and about the dread anticipation of the Cold War fading out.

The year 1989 is turning into 1990, and the Berlin Wall is halfway down. On the eve of New Year’s Eve, Child’s action hero, Jack Reacher, begins to investigate the death of a two-star general apparently felled by a heart attack in a blowsy motel outside Ft. Bird, N.C. As he dives into a cat’s cradle of stratagems, subterfuges and chicanery, danger dogs his heels. Jack’s efforts are further bedeviled by the fact that the enemy he pursues and who seeks to waylay him is us: his own alleged team.

It will come as no surprise to Reacher fans that the end proves cheerless. So here’s one more of Child’s vexing, lively, rapid-fire tales, interrupted only by interjections about Army life, lore and law that fill out the sauce. But the dish is spicy, so skip the esoterica -- unless you’re an Army buff -- and lap up the good stuff.

In “The Society” (Bantam: 368 pp., $25), Michael Palmer gives us more fraudulence than some conglomerates generate, more medical lore than “ER” conveys and more thrills than “Jurassic Park.” Palmer’s book is a jeremiad against HMOs looking “for ever more ways to raise fees ... and deny coverage to those most in need.”

In Palmer’s fable of medical suspense, several managed-care executives are dispatched with extreme prejudice. More brutal executions are expected to follow, but, despite the assassin’s cryptic messages, there’s no telling who is responsible. “Given their policies,” opines Will Grant, a successful surgeon and a fine physician, “it was only a matter of time before someone went postal on them.” Grant is a leading light of the Hippocrates Society, which seeks to reclaim the profession from the grip of those denying care to widows, orphans and oldsters.

Unfortunately, the dedicated doctor finds himself set up as the prime suspect. But the intrepid Grant and Det. Sgt. Patty Moriarity dowse, hack and quickstep through a maze of misdirections and ambushes where lurks their unseen foe. By the end, Will is vindicated, villains are confounded, and the country teeters on the brink of national health insurance. That’s what we call fiction.

Christopher Fowler’s “Full Dark House” (Bantam: 356 pp., $24) is a madcap mystery that’s completely crazy and great fun. A strange murder, then a string of more strange murders, occurs at the Palace Theatre in wartime London, just when an Offenbach musical is being staged. It’s November 1940, much of Europe is held by Hitler’s hordes and the blitz is moving into high gear: A cheerful romp is just what the beleaguered city needs to raise morale. But the cast of the frolicsome operetta is being decimated. The Peculiar Crimes Unit of the London police sends two lead detectives to cope with the case. Arthur Bryant and John May are young and eager, but they and their small team are lost in the murky shadows of the labyrinthine playhouse. The Palace apparently shelters a malevolent phantom who strikes, then vanishes, no one knows how or where. All this is in counterpoint to an undersong: a concomitant mystery set in our own day and featuring the same leading actors.

If this sounds confusing, it is. But it is also witty, frisky and enhanced by Keystone Kops-like scenes staged in perilous settings. The only flaws of the book will be apparent to those who remember the blitz. But few codgers are left to cavil. Those who enjoy this intermittently hilarious charade should be many. *