Village of the ghost bears

Here's a (real) tip about that (hypothetical) book in your hand: if the precinct cops in the story are more interesting than the criminals, then you're holding an authentic station-house procedural. But with crime novels increasingly dominated by superhero cops and out-of-this-world villains, who's writing traditional police procedurals anymore? Joseph Wambaugh is, and let us give thanks for that. A former detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, Wambaugh published his first cop-shop novel, "The New Centurions," in 1971, packing it in 25 years later after a string of terrific books about the boys and girls on the beat. Then there were no more novels for 10 years - until he came roaring back with "Hollywood Station," a triumph in the old style of heightened realism that he followed up in 2008 with "Hollywood Crows." HOLLYWOOD MOON (Little, Brown, $26.99), the third novel in this series, is set at the L.A.P.D.'s Hollywood Division and features a roster of believable, if idiosyncratic, police officers. Before activating his anecdotal plot, Wambaugh makes sure we know who the heroes are, by sending his cops out on assignments that turn into grotesquely sad and funny street scenes. Revealing themselves in these dramatic vignettes are winning players like the rookie Harris Triplett, a ,"cute little puppy" way out of his depth working undercover vice; handsome Hollywood Nate Weiss, clutching his SAG card and forever chasing elusive dreams of stardom and his female partner, Dana Vaughn, "the smartest mouth at Hollywood Station"; and the uproariously entertaining surfer dudes known as Flotsam and Jetsam, who shred the language as fearlessly as they cut the waves at Malibu. Once we've bonded with the cops, no criminal, no matter how quirky or crazy, can shake that allegiance. Not even villains like Dewey Gleason and his monstrous wife, Eunice, enterprising con artists with a flair for the intricate mechanics of identity theft who make the fatal mistake of inviting a teenage psychopath into the business. For all the personality they bring to the plot, these crooks can't alter the dynamic because there are no gray patches of moral ambiguity or conflicted loyalties in Wambaugh's world. Here, cops rule. Charles Lenox, the amateur detective in Charles Finch's beguiling Victorian mysteries, is finally given the chance to pursue his dream of becoming a member of Parliament in THE FLEET STREET MURDERS (Minotaur, $24.99). But the hastily called election in far off Stirrington comes at a most inopportune moment, just as this amiable gentleman sleuth (who is cut from the same fine English broadcloth as Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey) has involved himself in the baffling murders of two politically adversarial Fleet Street journalists. Being compelled to divide his time between London and the rural town where a local brewer is giving him a run for his money seems to sharpen Lenox's ratiocinative skills even as it broadens his character. And character is very much at the core of these whodunits, which are seen from the perspective of an educated gentleman born to wealth and power. Lenox not only has access to the great homes, the private clubs and the inner political circles of his aristocratic society, but he also has the kindness to use these privileges for the public good. Let others rail against the decadent upper crust; Finch's genial hero curls up by the fire in his library, sipping his tea, reading his books and indulging his many hobbies, including the detective work to which he brings a sense of duty and honor. You can't fake the stuff that Stan Jones pulls off in VILLAGE OF THE GHOST BEARS (Sono, $24), the fourth mystery in his series about Nathan Active, an Eskimo state trooper whose beat covers the most remote regions of Alaska. A writer of muscular words and stark images, Jones sets up his scenes like film shots: the daredevil maneuvers of a bush pilot landing on a lake; herds of caribou crossing the mountains to winter grounds; a body floating gently on the current of a stream, its flesh eaten by pike. This kind of writing makes for strong reading, especially with a sturdy murder plot to give it structure. Make that two plots: one involving the unidentified corpse, the other an arson case that claims the lives of eight citizens of Chukchi, a frontier town of wooden houses and steel backbones. Active knows the territory and understands the regional psychology. What he can't grasp is the brute instinct that makes people destroy the peace of such a majestic environment. Slim as it is, P. D. James's TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION (Knopf, $22) has biblical heft. Like her own novels, the style is clean, thoughtful and full of grace. In expounding her ideas on how detective fiction works, James makes fearless reference to everyone from Jane Austen to Evelyn Waugh. While she is gracious about the appeal of the tough guys ("The hard-boiled detectives are not introspective; it is through action and dialogue that their story is told"), she is more incisive about the work of her favorite classic authors - Dorothy L. Sayers chief among them. Perhaps not unaware that she herself is our great modern classicist, James speaks of her own methods, telling a wonderful anecdote about a blunder she made in writing about a motorcycle. She's also up to date on current authors, saluting their contributions to a genre that supplies "unpretentious celebrations of reason and order in our increasingly complex and disorderly world." There are no gray patches of moral ambiguity in Joseph Wambaugh's world. Here, cops rule.