The lush in Paradise

Crime

Night Passage

Robert B Parker

John Murray, #16.99

The Last Best Hope

Ed McBain

Hodder & Stoughton, #16.99

THERE have been two vintage periods for American crime fiction this century. We are, in case you didn't know it, in the middle of the second. The first was in the 40s when you were positively spoiled for choice with hard-boiled writers of the calibre of Chandler, Hammett, and James M Cain. Today we are fortunate enough to have authors like Elmore Leonard, and the James Gang (Ellroy, Lee Burke, and Crumley) to walk the mean streets.

But times were hard in between. It was left to a handful of writers to carry the torch through those wilderness years of the late 50s and early 60s. Two in particular spring to mind, Ed McBain and Robert B Parker. Neither were ever in danger of transcending the genre but both were enormously successful and commanded a great deal of respect. They were always talented, capable, and thoroughly reliable authors with a loyal following. And all of this they remain to this day.

Since his first novel, The Godwulf Manuscript in 1962, Parker has written some 30 books, most of them featuring his Boston-based protagonist Spenser. The more prolific McBain has delivered almost 70 (most of them 87th Precinct stories) since he first put pen to paper way back in 1956.

By happy coincidence, the two old-timers have new novels published this month. Both, in their own way, are departures. Both are excellent and bear comparison with most of what's on the contemporary crime fiction shelf these days.

Parker first. Night Passage could have been written by someone half his age. It features a new hero, Jess Stone, a former LAPD homicide detective with the ubiquitous chip on his shoulder and (the equally ubiquitous) drink problem. When his marriage goes belly-up Stone heads East, all the way to Paradise which, in this case, is a sleepy backwater town 20 miles up the coast from Boston.

He should have smelled a rat when he rolled in drunk for the job interview - and was offered there and then the post as the local police chief. Silly man, he failed to realise that an easygoing lush was just what Paradise was after.

What appears on the surface to be a quiet, idyllic, New England community is really a crucible of corruption, both moral and political. Dirty politicians, Mob-connected businessmen, sex-mad suburban wives, a right-wing militia, and maybe even a psycho serial killer on the loose. It's just another day in Paradise. In true a-man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do fashion, Jesse Stone is left alone to clean up the town. Sounds as corny as Kansas in August, I know, but Parker is such a good writer that it doesn't matter. His sparse, tightly-written prose is an easy-going pleasure to read.

And so to Ed McBain's The Last Best Hope, in which the wheel turns full circle and his two regular protagonists - Florida-based lawyer Matthew Hope and the 87th Precinct gang - finally get it together.

It starts with what looks like a fairly straightforward piece of legal work for Matthew. A beautiful woman, Jill Lawton, walks into his Calusa office and asks him to arrange her divorce. The only problem is that her hubby, Jack (yes, we are talking Jack and Jill here), has disappeared into thin air in a city somewhere up north.

Matthew has barely started working the case when a body turns up - which might be Jack's but, then again, might not. Then a second corpse is found, this time it's a dame called Holly, a struggling bisexual actress. Pretty soon Matthew is drawn into another potentially dangerous investigation, involving treachery, double-dealing, and a crazy museum heist.

The trail leads from sunny Fla to that snowbound city in the north. There Matthew discovers that the two victims had been part of a sexy menage a trois - and the search is on to find the third party, a handsome but ruthless ex-con. Help is at hand with

a few telephone calls to a police

detective called Steve Carella at the 87th Precinct.

The Last Best Hope is not McBain's finest. The plot is complex and not a little confusing. But there's enough suspense to keep you going and it rattles along at a fine pace towards a terrific climax. Not bad for an old-timer.