SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

The two main characters, one male, one female, are an ex-convict dog-catcher and a parole officer, respectively. Lorenzo Brown spends his days keeping cats and dogs from being abused and also trying to keep himself from being dragged back into the drug life he left behind not too long ago. Rachel Lopez, meanwhile, is a hard-working civil servant with a crippling sex addiction and a significant problem with the sauce (specifically bourbon).

As always, Pelecanos' turf remains the meaner-than-mean streets of Washington, DC. This is a city that makes Memphis and Detroit and St. Louis look like Gardens of Eden. There are few or no senators, congressmen, dignitaries or lawyers in Pelecanos' DC; mainly there are drug users, drug dealers, and gunshot victims. Then there are the honest, earnest folks like Alonzo and Rachel who provide Pelecanos' literary raison d'etre and allow him to wear his awesome compassion on his sleeve.

John Burdett is largely unknown in America but it is hard to see how that will remain the case for long. His latest novel -- his fourth, I think -- is every bit as mind-bogglingly exotic as its predescessors. And, yes, it again takes place in Thailand. "Bangkok Tattoo" (305 pp., $24.00, Knopf) is a sequel to 2003's "Bangkok Eight," but is superior in every way. For those accustomed to the high energy, intellectually heady crime prose of James Ellroy, your newest savior has arrived. Burdett's detective, Sonchai, is a well-drawn, extremely complicated character, an half-Caucasian, half-Thai bastard son of a prostitute, a police detective of flexible reliability and a Buddhist unafraid of violence and deceit. Sonchai is also a man of somewhat indecisive sexuality and a son of unfathomable honor and loyalty. Burdett, for his part, is a confident plotter and an equally comfortable prose stylist. He lived in Hong Kong for a decade working as a lawyer and learned a good deal about Asian culture(s). This trip through the sex-and-dope-based economy of Bangkok (and environs) is at once more plausible and more fantastic than that undertaking in his earlier efforts.

By far the greatest recent find is a murder mystery (the twelfth) written originally in French by a writer named Fred Vargas and concerning a character named Jen Baptiste Adamsberg, a most unlikely protagonist in this genre. He is not macho, not very scientific and seems to rely almost entirely on hunches -- he is something like a French version of lieutenant Columbo with more sex appeal and more beligerence. More interesting is the fact that Fred Vargas is a woman. The book is called "Have Mercy On Us All" (Simon and Schuster, 353 pp. $14.00) and its author has a lot to teach the mystery-writer's/women's-club based here in Kentucky. Although it is a true whodunit, wherein the killer's identity is not revealed until near the end, Vargas' book relies on few gimmicks. And, though it is just as exotic as anything by Burdett, has a grounded feel that seems to steer the reader toward a more realist interpretation.

Maybe because it references the bubonic plague. Something weird is happening in Paris and the papers are all aflutter: People are being killed by plague and are hysterically painting medieval symbols (strange reversed numeral fours) on their doors in order to ward off the disease. Inspector Adamsberg is the John Lennon of detectives; cynical, laid back yet nuerotic, romantic yet callous, fiercely intelligent. The supporting cast is at once realistic and downright bizarre. There is a self-installed town crier, an angry Viking tavern owner, a passel of hurt and plotting would-be femmes fatale and a disgraced professor carrying on as a mental health counselor. Almost all of them are ex-convicts.

This is as good a crime read as anything to come along in some time, so good that evey American contemporary save Pelecanos and perhaps Ellroy should be feeling left in the dust about now. For the last few years Europeans seem to have taken over this genre, usurping a throne built by Poe and Hammet and Chandler. It's high some American crime writers redoubled their efforts.