Crime fiction roundup

“The Midnight Line” by Lee Child, Delacorte, 368 pages, $28.99

Bruce Springsteen might have written “From Small Things (Big Things Come)” for Jack Reacher. Time and again, an object or event of seemingly little importance draws the existential wanderer into a dangerous quest to save a lost soul. In the latest Reacher gem, all it takes is a West Point class ring that he spots through a pawn shop window in Wisconsin. As a former military cop, Reacher knows that no soldier would part with such a meaningful possession unless under duress. He traces its path back to a laundromat in Rapid City, S.D., out of which a thuggish drug dealer operates. After disposing of a gang of bikers, Reacher buses it to Wyoming, where the dealer says his supplier is based — and where a hit on Reacher is subsequently ordered.

But for all that, there’s less violence and stronger emotion in “The Midnight Line” than most Reacher books. The missing soldier turns out to be a wounded veteran decorated for her valor in Afghanistan. She needs opioids to survive. Child, who dedicates the book to Purple Heart recipients, leaves us wishing that the powers that be cared as much about properly treating damaged veterans back home as pinning ribbons on them in public view.

“The Shadow District” by Arnaldur Indridason, Minotaur, 352 pages, $25.99

It’s always risky for a mystery writer to bid adieu to a protagonist as great as Indridason’s Inspector Erlendur. But the Icelandic author gets off to a terrific start with his new series, which features two investigators, each operating in a different time frame. Reykjavik police detective Flovent’s investigation of the murder of a young pregnant woman takes place in 1944, the precipitous year in which British- and American-occupied Iceland became an independent republic. Decades later, Konrad, a seasoned ex-detective, is keeping his hand in the game by probing the murder of an elderly man with deep-seated ties to the female victim.

Alternating between plots, “The Shadow District” makes the present a sad and sometimes heartbreaking extension of the past. As always, Indridason is concerned with larger themes of corruption, abuse of power and anti-immigrant bias. He also deals in mysticism and mythology. While Erlendur is surely missed, the deftly spun “Shadow District” leaves us eager to read the next installment of the series.

“The Ghosts of Galway” by Ken Bruen, Mysterious, 336 pages, $25

Ireland’s Ken Bruen is an acquired taste. He writes short, rat-a-tat sentences that suggest a meeting of Samuel Beckett and Ogden Nash. The first-person narration of his go-to character, former cop Jack Taylor, is fueled equally by booze, cynicism and massive impatience. Not so credibly, Taylor can’t stop dropping hip pop culture references — “Serial,” Dave Eggers and “American Hustle.” In “The Ghosts of Galway,” Taylor is hired to retrieve “The Red Book,” an ancient heretical tome that has fallen into the hands of a rogue priest who describes it as “a challenge to the Church to deny its existence.”

The violent plot matters less than the open wounds it highlights. For all of Taylor’s affectations, his confessions of guilt and regret can be downright lyrical. Nothing threatens Taylor more than the ghosts dancing around in his head. “Whatever about the road less

traveled, I always took the road to despair,” he says. “Be nice to think I learned from experience.”