Ominous undercurrents

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School Days

Robert B. Parker

Putnam: 296 pp., $24.95

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The Patriots Club

Christopher Reich

Delacorte: 436 pp., $26

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Rosa

Jonathan Rabb

Crown: 406 pp., $24.95

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Remains Silent

Michael Baden and Linda Kenney

Alfred A. Knopf: 240 pp., $22.95

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ROBERT B. PARKER’S latest Spenser mystery, “School Days,” is what we might expect from a master of murderous irony who has held cracked mirrors up to our frazzled society for 32 years: It offers plenty of sex but not much love, petite plots but plenty of entertainment. But now Parker’s insistence on leaving no hope unturned shifts focus from so-called adults to the schools that work so hard to infantilize the young.

Comfortable Dowling, Mass., is shocked and shaken when two teenagers wearing ski masks walk into Dowling School, a private academy, and fire 9-millimeter handguns, killing seven people and wounding eight more. The boys are arrested, and they confess, are held for trial and could face life sentences or worse. Boston private investigator Spenser is hired by the wealthy grandmother of one of the youths who wants him to clear her Jared.

Spenser slaloms through clumps of locals who are trying to demonstrate grief, justify behavior, cover up failure, place blame or shift it -- but mostly to forget. He interviews the school shrink, the headmaster, the local drug dealer and assorted young people who sound much like those recently featured so engagingly by Tom Wolfe in “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” Their language is perfectly awful, their transgressions perfectly predictable, their boredom perfectly understandable. “It’s about conform, conform, conform ... and then you go kaboom,” explains one Dowling student.

Spenser tries to find out why Jared and his pal went kaboom and who equipped them to do it. What he finds, though unexpected, confirms his dim opinion of human character and intelligence. The two-fisted P.I. is in good form and his creator in fine fettle here.

In “The Patriots Club,” Christopher Reich opens with a bang and never lets up until the very end, which turns out a bit soppy. Suspense never flags; much of the action is lethal. The “Patriots” turn out to be a dubious cartel of Wall Street and government operatives, corporate movers and shakers, linked in a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-watch-yours conspiracy.

Thomas Bolden, who runs afoul of them, is a successful Wall Street hotshot and a do-gooder on the side, triumphantly sure-footed at both. He suddenly finds himself falsely accused of crimes and malefactions, running from police, media and unspecified roughs without knowing why. Having grown up in foster homes, he ignores his forebears, but they will turn out to be the source of his troubles. Bolden has snagged himself an equally resilient and appealing partner, Jenny. Together and apart, they negotiate the rocky rapids of relentless malignity to an explosive landfall. If you think about it, the tale of their vicissitudes doesn’t hold much water. Happily, Reich leaves no time to think but keeps us panting all the way. A great read.

In his political thriller “Rosa,” Jonathan Rabb takes us to post-World War I Berlin. The war had begun well for the Germans but ended badly. By fall 1918, hunger stalked the land, one ally after another had collapsed, the German fleet had mutinied, the emperor had fled to Holland and a republic had replaced him. Moderate socialists took over the government and radical socialists calling themselves Spartacists challenged them. In January 1919, turmoil turned to street fighting that left parts of central Berlin in ruins and the Spartacist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, murdered by right-wing “volunteers.”

Rabb’s Det. Inspector Nikolai Hoffner of the Kripo (Berlin’s criminal police agency) is pursuing a serial killer who carves bizarre designs into his victims’ backs. That Rosa turns out to be among the victims is a detail that turns into a distraction when her corpse disappears and Hoffner’s investigation is trumped by the maneuvers of Polpo (the political police). Hoffner presses on, retrieves Rosa’s corpse, identifies the crazy perp but not his manipulators, loses his wife and his job but keeps his integrity. Through it all, Rabb etches the searing social history of the times and the everyday hurly-burly: shortages of food and fuel but not liquor; demonstrations; strikes; assassinations; and general uncertainty. Not just about tomorrow but about friend and foe: just who is who.

As the book draws to a close, the characters’ motivations become more didactic and less convincing. But the elegantly vibrant narrative remains compelling even as it hints at fevers and flare-ups to come.

The bodies in Michael Baden and Linda Kenney’s convoluted and chilling novel are not nearly as quiet as the title, “Remains Silent,” suggests. Once forensic pathologist Jake Rosen, a deputy chief medical examiner of New York, gets hold of a bone, he worries it until it discloses all of its secrets. Still more carcasses are uncovered when Jake, summoned by best friend and mentor Dr. Harrigan, drives to the site of a proposed shopping mall north of the city. The mall is expected to send local tax revenue soaring. But plans and expectations are suspended when excavations reveal the unanticipated remains of residents of a local mental hospital. Harrigan dies suddenly. Cancer? Suicide? Or was it poisoning by person or persons unknown? That’s what Rosen thinks. That’s what prevaricating local authorities don’t want him to think.

Jake recruits a crusading attorney, Philomena Manfreda (call her Manny), devoted to underdogs; to her dog, Mycroft, who is decked out in designer duds; and to her Porsche. Deliciously rigged in Chanel, Prada, Vuitton, Lauren and other exhibits of product placement for shopaholics, Manny is more fun than Jake, who is a single-minded bloodhound dedicated to autopsies and Chinese takeout. She also looks cuter than Jake would in her diaphanous La Perla nightwear. But both make engaging leads and their teamwork reveals unexpected dodges, twists and obfuscations -- some lost in the faraway past, others murderously simmering still -- that propel this high-velocity thriller to a satisfying resolution. *