New in crime fiction: Dennis Lehane, Sophie Hannah, Tom Franklin and more

This month's crime-related offerings include a return to detective fiction by a Boston writer, British psychological suspense, a Southern-fried literary mystery and something from our Francophone cousins in Québec.

In the wake of his stunning historical novel "The Given Day," Dennis Lehane is revisiting the form that first got the writer noticed: detective stories. Big-hearted, sometimes heartbreaking and always compelling, "Moonlight Mile" (Morrow,336pp.,$26.99) is the very welcome return of blue-collar Boston private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.

Things have changed since Kenzie and Gennaro were last seen. They're married! With a kid! Not only that: Kenzie's working for a big firm, with decidedly mixed feelings. The money and benefits are good; the loss of freedom is not. And Gennaro thinks that maybe Kenzie, husband and dad, should retire from the danger business.

Cue the ghost of an old case. Amanda McCready, the missing girl rescued in 1998's "Gone Baby Gone," is now in college — and has again disappeared, mixed up somehow with some scary-funny Russian mobsters. Kenzie — wracked with guilt because his earlier rescue meant Amanda had to return to a toxic home environment — now feels compelled to find her again.

Sophie Hannah is a British writer whose novels about coppers Charlotte (Charlie) Zailer and Simon Waterhouse are intriguing blends of police procedural and psychological suspense. "The Truth-Teller's Lie" (Penguin, 363 pp., $15 paper) begins when Naomi Jenkins arrives at a police station, claiming that Robert Haworth, the married man she's seeing, has disappeared.

The cops are skeptical. Haworth's wife, who knows about the affair, says he's visiting friends — but she's acting oddly. Then Jenkins changes her tune, saying that Haworth once brutally raped her. And the story gets progressively stranger.

Where is Haworth? Why is his wife acting that way? Which version of Jenkins' story is right? Is she a mentally disturbed and spectacularly unreliable narrator — or not? Alternating chapters with the cops' point of view and first-person monologues by Jenkins, Hannah takes pains to throw her readers off-balance — and succeeds brilliantly.

"Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" (Morrow,274pp.,$24.99) is a powerful literary thriller that walks a fine line between dead-serious social problems and bemused, perfectly framed observations of rural life.

Mississippi writer Tom Franklin's tale revolves around two sort-of friends. Football hero Silas Jones is part of the tiny police force in his hometown. Larry Ott is an oddball loner who has stayed around despite the widespread belief that he's responsible for a terrible, decades-old crime.

Two recent murders focus attention again on Larry and, disregarding their testy relationship, he reaches out to Silas. Despite his tender heart, the cop ignores the plea, with shocking results. What happens next is a volatile collision of racism, family secrets, shame, fear and friendship.

Although Inspector Armand Gamache is quite content in his small Québec town, he never shies from wicked doings. Louise Penny's books about him are affectionate love letters to the author's adopted province, and "Bury Your Dead" (St.Martin's,384pp.,$24.99) may be her best.

The main plot finds Gamache spending some free time at Québec City's Literary and Historical Society, but all is not well at its normally somnolent headquarters. Specifically, there's a dead man in the basement: an eccentric amateur historian who had been researching Québec's revered founder, Samuel de Champlain.

Penny seamlessly weaves two subplots into her elegant book, along with rich portraits of Inspector Gamache and the endearingly cracked characters around him.

There are clear comparisons here with Martha Grimes' Inspector Richard Jury and his rather peculiar small-town friends, but Penny's voice remains very much her own.

Seattle writer Adam Woog's column on crime fiction appears on the second Sunday of the month in The Seattle Times.