The outfit

When your number's up, your number's up - although not necessarily in the realm of crime fiction, where a series detective can miraculously recover from seemingly fatal wounds like author fatigue, professional redundancy and out-of-print oblivion. John Harvey's popular Nottingham police detective, Inspector Charlie Resnick, looked like a goner in "Last Rites," but the jazz-loving, cat-collecting, humanitarian detective is back on the job in COLD IN HAND (Otto Penzler/Harcourt, $26). The question is, can such a decent, honorable man survive in a society where the rules are breaking down? Gritty Nottingham was always a tough city to police, though never as bad as its reputation. "Anything 50 miles out of London, they think everyone's going to be wearing loincloths and painting themselves blue," as one provincial detective puts it. But street crime in the battered industrial center has degenerated into something like chaos now that its youth gangs are fully armed and far more dangerous. International criminals have taken over the sex trade and added gunrunning to their repertory. Meanwhile, police efforts to keep the peace in embattled immigrant neighborhoods are undermined by the resentment and racial hostility of the local populace. "Doesn't even rain like it used to," one detective complains. His rants against "the multicultural society" aren't the sort of thing we're accustomed to hearing from the long-suffering coppers in this thoughtful series, but such outbursts of futility feel every bit as authentic as the fusillades of incoherent rage that ricochet off the streets. Ignoring the heated rhetoric, Resnick doggedly operates according to his own fairness doctrine. ("Education, wasn't that at the heart of it? Jobs, housing?") He's always been on the lookout for the essential goodness of a tough gang kid or the common thread of humanity that binds us all. But even good guys have their limits, and the jazz album Resnick plays at the end, after a shocking, belief-shattering murder - a mournful concert of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong - tells us things will never be the same. If Andrew Pyper scripted our collective nightmares, we'd all be dreaming and screaming like the narrator of his gorgeously written and thoroughly unnerving suspense thriller, THE KILLING CIRCLE (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95). Your heart goes out to Patrick Rush, a grieving young widower, anxious father and dispirited television critic ("The Couch Potato") for a Toronto daily, who joins a writing workshop to thaw his frozen feelings - only to realize he has no story to tell. The same can't be said of fellow scribblers like creepy Ivan, the subway conductor who writes Kafkaesque fantasies about a sewer rat, or girlish Angela, whose morbid horror story about "a terrible man who does terrible things" not only reflects the activities of a real-life serial killer but seems to be directing his attacks on members of their own circle - if he isn't already a member of it. Taken as either a classy ghost story or the chronicle of one man's mental breakdown, this is a terrific yarn. But in examining the universal need to define one's self through narrative, it also explores the darker side of storytelling. In this context, it's worth remembering that, at least in theory, "the teller never dies in his own tale." It may be heretical to say this, but Henning Mankell could put off even the most loyal reader with the polemical tone he often takes in his novels. That being said, THE PYRAMID (New Press, $26.95) is sure to bring any alienated fans stampeding back into the fold. Although this excellent collection was written while Mankell was still at work on his cycle of morality mysteries featuring the morose Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, its two novellas and three short stories are all set before Jan. 8, 1990 (the day Wallander took on his first published case in the novel "Faceless Killers") and follow the career of this iconic hero from his earliest days as a 21-year-old rookie cop. In "Wallander's First Case," he must be schooled in the most rudimentary procedures (don't go unarmed after a guy with a knife), but the learning process is priceless. By the time of the title story, set 20 years later, Wallander's character has been forged and his stern moral code firmly set in place. The grand surprise here is the pivotal role played by the detective's irascible father, who passes on a most important life lesson - to climb (literally, if need be) the pyramid of one's dreams. As devoted as we are to our heroes, we can't get enough of the bad boys we call antiheroes. Patricia Highsmith's charming preppy killer, Tom Ripley, ranks high in this pantheon of immortals, and all five of his deadly adventures are now available in a handsome boxed set, THE COMPLETE RIPLEY NOVELS (Norton, $100; or separately, $13.95 each, in paperback). While this appealing monster remains at his irresistible best in "The Talented Mr. Ripley," it's a guilty pleasure to watch him refine his murderous craft, right up to his final amoral act in "Ripley Under Water." Far more of a shock are the first three novels in which Donald E. Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced the professional thief and ruthless killer known only as Parker. By the time this cunning crook makes his payback move against the mob in THE OUTFIT, his bleak wit and criminal ingenuity are fully in place. But both THE HUNTER and THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE (University of Chicago, paper, $14 each) reveal what a sexy brute he was, way back before he was cool. Can decent, honorable Inspector Charlie Resnick survive in a society where the rules are breaking down?