Crime fiction’s big hitters step out into new territory

It takes as much nerve as inspiration for a veteran writer to depart the setting in which he or she has achieved great success. But with no small amount of risk, that’s what Scott Turow and Sara Paretsky have done with their new thrillers.

Thirty years after rocketing up the charts with his gorgeously written courtroom thriller, “Presumed Innocent,” Turow takes leave of Kindle County, a fictional stand-in for Chicago, for the Netherlands in “Testimony.”

And in “Fallout,” her 18th V.I. Warshawski novel, Paretsky has her beloved detective conduct an investigation outside of Chicago for the first time, in smalltown Kansas, which some followers of the series might find as unlikely as setting Sam Spade loose in cheese country.

And if you consider the great Dennis Lehane’s noir-soaked return to contemporary Boston in “Since We Fell,” the setting of his literary masterpiece, “Mystic River,” but a significant shift after the Florida settings of his recent “Given Day” trilogy, we’ve got three of our best crime novelists simultaneously venturing into fresh territory — and making those moves pay off.

“Presumed Innocent” raised the bar for legal thrillers so high that no one has quite reached it, including Turow. Drawing on his experience as a prosecutor, he has turned out some sturdy sequels, but nothing as gripping as his obsessive meltdown classic. In “Testimony,” seeking a break from his personal and career problems, 54-four-year-old Kindle County prosecutor Bill Ten Boom (the name is Dutch) takes a job with an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He is in charge of investigating the apparent massacre of 400 Roma refugees in 2004, nine years after the Bosnian war officially ended.

Were the Roma slaughtered for assisting the U.S. Army in its attempt to capture Laza Kajevic, monstrous leader of the Bosnian Serbs? Did the Americans participate in the elimination of the Roma for aiding the still-at-large Kajevic? All possibilities flash before Boom’s eyes when his life is threatened.

It’s a compelling story, told with Turow’s usual ease, authority and understated humor. But after all these years, he can’t escape the shadow of “Presumed Innocent.”

In the epic “Fallout,” “Vic” Warshawski traipses to Lawrence, Kan. — where Paretsky, daughter of a University of Kansas biologist, grew up — to find August Veriden, a black film student. He disappeared from Chicago with Emerald Ferring, a faded actress who once starred in a “Jeffersons”-like sitcom.

Nearly 35 years after a fiery demonstration on a missile base outside of town, Lawrence is still “festering with secrets” and racial tensions. While investigating a series of mysterious deaths, past and present, Warshawski saves the life of a local woman who has been overmedicated to keep her from spilling some of those secrets. Vic also discovers that the tainted soil surrounding the giant food company now occupying the former Air Force base site may be making people sick.

Lehane’s wicked-smart “Since We Fell” begins with what looks like a conclusion: “On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-seventh year, Rachel shot her husband dead.” As you might expect, the book then flashes back to events that lay out the secrets and lies leading up to the shooting, which, I hasten to add, ends with the victim mouthing the words, “I love you.” But Lehane so completely defies expectations, you get the feeling he’s as interested in fooling his characters as he is in fooling us.

If this were a Hitchcock film, the shooting might put a sardonic cap on the drama. But there is another act left in “Since We Fell” that considers the nature of love and the limits of forgiveness. Free of the period demands of his excellent recent novels, Lehane is in feisty form, channeling classic noir with cutting irony.