what do you do with a tired old cop? You give him a bright young rookie to keep him on the ball. In return for this infusion of energy, the kid gets the benefit of the broad experience and infinite wisdom of the veteran. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway. But in the burning ROOM (Little, Brown, $28), Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch mystery, there's precious little wisdom the L.A.P.D. detective can impart to his new partner, Lucia (Lucy) Soto, about the curious case of a homicide victim who took 10 years to die. While playing in a mariachi band, Orlando Merced was apparently the accidental victim of a gang-related shooting, paralyzed after a bullet lodged in his spine. But it isn't until he dies and the bullet proves to have been shot from a rifle ("A drive-by with a rifle? Come on. Unlikely") that this cold case becomes an active homicide investigation. Since no amount of advanced technology can help when there's no more forensic evidence to process, Bosch takes the opportunity to show his partner how they did things in the old days. More important, he has some pointers on how to avoid the quicksand of departmental politics. Bosch, who's always been a rebel, lucks out with Lucy, since she's something of a maverick herself - secretly working off the clock on a cold case of her own, an unsolved arson in a day care home that took the lives of five of her childhood friends. A master at construction, Connelly finds a way to link the two cases, which burrow deep into Los Angeles's Latino community. But by then nobody's teaching anybody anything because Bosch and Lucy are working closely as a team. As often happens in Connelly's police procedurals, Bosch's meticulously built case is undermined by political corruption in high places, leaving him "suddenly sick to death of everything." But as he has aged, this cynical detective has also mellowed. Sitting in a jazz club listening to a young woman performing a "plaintive and sad" saxophone solo of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" gives Bosch hope that "there was still a chance for him, that he could still find whatever it was he was looking for, no matter how short his time was." IT'S AN IMAGE that's hard to forget: the severed but still clasped hands of two adulterous lovers, buried for years in a cookie tin. That's Ruth Rendell for you, offering a vision that's grim, grotesque and yet strangely beautiful. The extraordinary chain of events in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (Scribner, $26) commences when these hands are unearthed by workmen digging out a cellar in the London suburb of Loughton. During the war, children used to play here, in the foundations of houses that were never built, and the discovery prompts a meeting of the survivors. Although these childhood friends are now old enough to have great-grandchildren, their further gatherings yield surprising consequences, including one romantic liaison that leads to happiness and another that leads to violence. Rendell makes clever work of a split time frame to transport her characters from the past to the present and back again. But her best, most idiosyncratic study is her portrait of the villain of the piece, a wicked man in his youth and an absolute devil in his dotage, determined to live to be 100 out of pure spite. not every Irish author is in love with the sound of his own voice. There's not much poetry in Stuart Neville's crime novels, which are set in Belfast and read like dispatches from a war zone - terse prose, dark thoughts, raw feelings, THE FINAL SILENCE (Soho Crime, $26.95) offers confirmation that the past is never past in Northern Ireland. Rea Carlisle didn't ask to be the custodian of her Uncle Raymond's nightmares, but that's what she inherits after he commits suicide and leaves his old house and all its secrets to her mother, who persuades Rea to move in and make it her own. But once she breaks down the locked door to the back bedroom and starts reading the entries in her uncle's journal, it's one horror after another. Although this is a more formal mystery than Neville's previous ones, its characters remain possessed by Belfast's old, familiar ghosts. SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD IS a regular writing machine. She churns out romantic novels, young adult novels, post-apocalyptic novels, historical novels and a fun series, set in rural Missouri, about a middle-aged widow who runs a sewing-machine repair shop and does a little vigilante work on the side, dispensing tough justice to abusive husbands, THE MISSING PLACE (Gallery Books, paper, $16) is something else again, a disturbing tale of two very different women, both anxious mothers, who meet in the remote North Dakota boom town where they've traveled in search of their sons, now missing from the oil rig where they worked. Colleen Mitchell comes from a wealthy suburb of Boston and is so shocked by the primitive living conditions in the oil fields that she's barely able to function. Shay Capparelli, the scrappy woman who rescues her, has better survival skills and is less inhibited about challenging the big oil company that's intent on stonewalling them. The two mothers are the unlikeliest of buddies, but when they learn how to work together they're positively ferocious - and as brave as any of those macho guys up on the rigs.

When Rea Carlisle inherits her uncle's house in Belfast, she discovers a secret diary detailing eight grisly murders. Her father, an ambitious local politician, wants to destroy the journal, so she confides in a former lover, DI Jack Lennon. Then she is murdered and the diary disappears. Lennon, on medical leave and addicted to pills and alcohol after being shot in an earlier case (Stolen Souls), is in disgrace for having killed a fellow cop. Without official standing, Lennon pursues solutions on his own, beset by personal demons, police obstruction, and corruption. VERDICT This is the fourth Lennon tale with the shadow of Northern Ireland's past bloody sectarian violence, the Troubles, still hanging over all. Rea's father has a paramilitary background, Lennon fears a crooked police official threatening him, and he is in danger of losing custody of his ten-year-old daughter. Alternating points of view reveal the horrifying mind of the killer as well as the hate and suspicion that remain years after peace has been declared. Solving the mystery leaves Lennon spent, physically and fiscally, but readers will hope he manages to reappear in this highly regarded series.-Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

*Starred Review* More than a year after being wounded in a deadly shootout, Belfast DI Jack Lennon is struggling. His request for a medical pension seems doomed, since he killed a cop, albeit a dirty one, and his personal life is slipping. Then an old girlfriend, Rea Carlisle, asks for his help after she finds an album recounting murders in the home of the uncle she hardly knew, a man who just committed suicide; there's also a potentially incriminating photograph of several men, including her uncle and her father, a rising politician. The album has disappeared by the time Rea meets with Lennon, and shortly afterward she is murdered, making him in the eyes of DCI Serena Flanagan the prime suspect. The relentless Flanagan, just diagnosed with breast cancer, and the disreputable Lennon are at odds in a cat-and-mouse game until Lennon uses his long-established contacts to track down the serial killer behind it all. Neville has established a reputation for his superlative Belfast novels in which the city itself functions as a character. Here Belfast is suitably atmospheric, but these events might have occurred anywhere a psychopath gives vent to his urges. Psychological thriller and police procedural blend for a pulse-pounding crime novel from a master of the genre.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2014 Booklist

In Nevilles engrossing fourth mystery featuring Belfast Det. Insp. Jack Lennon (after 2011s Stolen Goods), Rea Carlisle, while cleaning out a house she recently inherited from her uncle, finds a leather-bound book containing detailed descriptions of eight murders, along with fingernails and hair taken from the bodies of victims. Her father, a member of Northern Irelands parliament, the Stormont Assembly, fears for his political career, and forbids Rea to go to the authorities. Instead, Rea seeks unofficial help from Jack Lennon, who was once her lover, unaware that Lennon is facing suspension for shooting a fellow officer in Stolen Goods. Lennons tough new supervisor, Det. Chief Insp. Serena Flanagan, doesnt trust him and tracks his activities closely. While investigating the revelations of the murder diary, as well as an old incriminating photo and a senseless murder, Lennon faces powerful enemies who threaten not just his career but also everything important to him. The action builds to a chilling conclusion. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A woman with a family secret turns to a wounded cop with a weakness for women in trouble.When Raymond Drew throws himself into the River Lagan from the old towpath in Belfast, he leaves behind a semidetached house, eight bags' and boxes' worth of personal effects, and a locked room that hides a dark personal history. His 34-year-old niece, Rea Carlisle, hopes to take possession of the house rather than live with her submissive mother and coldly ambitious father. She's also determined to get into the locked room. What she finds there makes her call DI Jack Lennon, who dated her briefly and dumped her in a bar, because she needs to talk to someone in law enforcement about her dreadful suspicions regarding her uncle. Jack (Ratlines, 2013, etc.) isn't the most reliable champion: He's on suspension, living with a woman he doesn't love, drinking and popping pills, clinging to the right to care for his motherless daughter, and fighting his superior's attempts to push him off the force after a shootout over a Ukrainian prostitute. Jack took three bullets to get her to safety and is still partly disabled from the injury. Although he secretly thinks Rea is crazy, he still tries to help. When she's brutally murdered, Jack is one of the suspects, and he goes rogue to find the real killer. He has some secret information of his own as protection against those who are trying to destroy him professionally, but as the stakes rise, he realizes that being kicked off the force may not be the worst danger he faces. An uneasy alliance with cool-headed DCI Serena Flanagan from the Major Investigation Team and a visit to the even darker side of a still-bleak Belfast may be Jack's only hope of survival. Neville's gritty tale sets a man barely holding onto his personal worth loose in a city still recovering from the Troubles. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.