Wambaugh, Joseph. Harbor Nocturne.

NY: Mysterious Press, 2012.

This welcome new cop yarn from Wambaugh — who has been writing this stuff for forty years, though he got away from novels for awhile — is actually the fifth in the “Hollywood Station” series, though it isn’t marketed that way.

Connelly, Michael. The Drop.

NY: Little, Brown, 2011.

Detective Harry Bosch, who has been with the LAPD for more than forty years now, is facing absolute, mandatory, no-more-extensions retirement — thirty-nine months and counting — and while he accepts the inevitable, more or less, he’s not very happy about it. He just wants to spend the rest of his life solving murders.

Martin, Steve. Shopgirl.

NY: Hyperion, 2000.

The best way to approach this short book is to pretend you’ve never heard of Steve Martin, to forget that he was once a wild and crazy guy with a fake arrow through his head. Anyone who has read his more recent novels (this one was his first) and short stories and screenplays knows he’s a lot deeper than that. His imagination also displays considerable breadth, from the hilariously bizarre originality of Cruel Shoes to the in-depth social observation of An Object of Beauty.

Connelly, Michel. The Fifth Witness.

NY: Little, Brown, 2011.

The last few entries in Connelly’s long-running police procedural series featuring Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD have, frankly, been pretty weak, as if the author has become as weary of his character as Bosch is of the world in general. Perhaps as an antidote, he began a new series a few years ago, also set in Los Angeles, starring Mickey Haller, a defense attorney (and therefore the natural enemy of the police), known as the “Lincoln lawyer” because he doesn’t maintain an actual office, preferring to do business from the fully-equipped back seat of an armored, bullet-proof Lincoln Town Car while being driven from client to courthouse to police division all over Greater LA.

Wambaugh, Joseph. Hollywood Hills.

NY: Little, Brown, 2010.

The author’s method with the “Hollywood Station” series, of which this is the fourth installment, is to gradually develop one or two plotlines involving more serious crimes, whether white-collar or drug-addled, and to alternate the complex working-out of those with numerous anecdotes (which Wambaugh famously collects from cops everywhere), character sketches (both cops and bad guys), and mordantly funny episodes.

Connelly, Michael. The Reversal.

NY: Little, Brown, 2010.

The idea here is an interesting one — Mickey Haller, hardcore defense attorney and protagonist of The Lincoln Lawyer, is invited by the DA to sign on as a special prosecutor in the re-trial of a convicted murderer sprung from San Quentin after twenty-four years by genetic evidence that didn’t match. Haller has misgivings but it’s a challenge he finds he can’t resist –

Powers, Tim. Earthquake Weather.

NY: Tor, 1997.

Ordinarily, when I write a review — and I write a great many of them — I try to summarize at least the salient points of the story and the plot, both to identify the book and to try to rope in potential readers. But I’m having a hard time doing that with this book; there’s just so much story here. It’s the third volume of a trilogy: Expiration Date was not a sequel to the award-winning Last Call but a work parallel to it; Earthquake Weather is very much a sequel to both the earlier works at once.

Powers, Tim. Expiration Date.

NY: Tor, 1996.

There are two cities in the world where it’s easy to believe that almost anything might happen. One is London, and Neil Gaiman and China Mieville can tell you all about what happens there. The other is Los Angeles (with Las Vegas, perhaps, as a distant psychic suburb), and Tim Powers (who lives in Orange County) is its resident expert. To anyone who knows the City of Angels, it doesn’t seem that farfetched to be told that most of its wandering street people are actually solidified ghosts, too crazed to know they’re dead.

Wambaugh, Joseph. Hollywood Moon.

NY: Little, Brown, 2009.

This is the third of the author’s “Hollywood Station” series, and it’s the best yet. In fact, this hilarious, touching, blood-chilling, and dramatic gathering of multiple narrative threads is proof that Wambaugh still has what it takes to be telling street-cop stories. All the characters we’ve come to know from the earlier two books are here: Hollywood Nate Weiss, SAG-card-carrying Patrolman-2, and Flotsam and Jetsam, the surfer cops whose beach jive sometimes makes them almost unintelligible to their colleagues,

Connelly, Michael. Nine Dragons.

NY: Little, Brown, 2009.

This is the fifteen novel in just under twenty years featuring LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, and while the series has suffered somewhat recently, this one isn’t too bad — except for when it becomes far-fetched. Harry, who spent years at the Hollywood Division homicide desk, then retired for three years, then came back to the cold case squad, has now spent several years as part of the Homicide Special squad — the elite of the elite.