KING SUCKERMAN.<i> By George P. Pelecanos</i>...

“Chandler with onions” is the way novelist Ross Macdonald described one of his earliest short stories, adding, “but then Chandler himself is Hammett with Freud potatoes. As Dostoevsky said about Gogol (I think), we all came out from under Hammett’s black mask.”

Forty-five years after Macdonald issued that summation, it remains valid. Today’s hard-edged crime novels range far and wide in style and content, from George P. Pelecanos’ “King Suckerman,” which revels in the excesses of mid-1970s masculine lifestyles, to Wendy Hornsby’s “A Hard Light,” a generally unvarnished portrait of a modern woman at the crossroads. But they continue to owe an obvious debt to Dashiell Hammett, the spiritual father of all hard-boiled fiction.

“King Suckerman”--the title refers to a black exploitation movie that practically every character in this densely populated novel is eagerly anticipating--transports us back to Washington, D.C., during the week leading up to this nation’s bicentennial celebration. This is not the corridors-of-power D.C. Instead, Pelecanos focuses on street people, like prototype slacker-marijuana peddler Dimitri Karras and music store owner Marcus Clay, as they react to the temper and the tempo of the ‘70s.

After a shirts-and-skins basketball game, the buddies stop off at the home of second-rate wise guy Eddie Marchetti for Karras to purchase a bag of weed. But Marchetti is entertaining other customers, a sociopath named Wilton Cooper and his demented and homicidal sidekick, Bobby Roy Clagget. An altercation develops, and Karras and Clay wind up on the run with Marchetti’s teenage girlfriend and $20,000.

The story that follows--with the goons closing in on the good guys until the inevitable bloody confrontation--is obviously not what lifts this book above the level of the average thriller. It’s Pelecanos’ approach to this familiar material that makes all the difference. His quick-take descriptions of restless youth, his flawless evocation of period detail and his smooth shifts of point of view all conspire to add unusual dimension to his prose.

Even more important, instead of indulging in the Elmore Leonard-Carl Hiaasen style of crime writing, Pelecanos seems to care too much for even the least of his creations to make them appear absurd. His villains may be brutal or mindless or pathetic, but they’re not ridiculous. Marchetti, for example, with his disinterest in his criminal pursuits and his fondness for TV lawmen, would have been a nice reversal of the Mafia stereotype in anybody’s novel, but Pelecanos goes the extra step; he gives him a weird, wistful dignity.

Initially, Pelecanos’ protagonist, Karras (the son of one of the antiheroes of the author’s last novel, the 1950s-based “The Big Blowdown”), appears so aimless, morally bankrupt and selfish that one may wonder what Clay, a self-reliant, enterprising Vietnam vet, sees in him. But that seems to be the author’s point: Clay has his eye on the future and can visualize his pal’s potential. It takes the reader a while to realize that Karras, though in his 20s, is still an adolescent. As the book progresses, so does he. “King Suckerman” is a coming-of-age novel masquerading as a thriller. The good news is that it succeeds as both.

Just as our familiarity with the modes and mores of this country in the ‘70s adds mightily to the overall effect of “King Suckerman,” it is the fresh, informed detailing of the unfamiliar territory of Seoul during that same period that gives Martin Limon’s “Slicky Boys” its extra punch. The slam-bang story is told from the point of view of George Suen~o, formerly of the East L.A. barrios but, in 1973, happily at home in the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

With the DMZ only 30 miles to the north, Seoul is no bed of roses, but the intelligent and adroit Suen~o and his bull-headed partner, Ernie Bascom, (who made their debut in the well-received “Jade Lady Burning”) love their lives, relishing time spent in the city’s red light district, where they maintain order and try to stay out of trouble. They’re effective at the former, but the latter keeps tripping them up. They agree to help a shy, beautiful Asian woman by delivering a note to her British boyfriend. When the boyfriend is found eviscerated, the two raffish MPs feel compelled to disobey the orders of their superiors and hunt down the wily, brutal murderer themselves. This requires the assistance of the local organized crime network, the slicky boys. And that sort of help is costly to lawmen.

Morally complex, “Slicky Boys” is a smart combination of classic noir thriller and police procedural. And it offers a special panacea for the remaining dog days of summer: As Suen~o and Bascom explore the treacherous and frosty byways of a wintry South Korea, discovering corpses in ice banks and nearly freezing in their parkas, you may find yourself reaching out to turn down the air conditioner.

The private eye genre, all but moribund a decade ago, was given a new lease on life when a large sisterhood of sleuths donned gat and holster. For a while it seemed as if women would be the sole survivors on the mean streets. But the pendulum doth swing, and lately a new group of guy gumshoes is threatening to equalize the gender ratio.

In the forefront is Robert Crais’ justifiably popular Elvis Cole. In his first caper, “The Monkey’s Raincoat” (1987), Cole was a younger, hipper and considerably less smug version of the then-reigning king of the hill, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. Like that Boston-based detective, Southern Californian Cole was a bit of a smart aleck with witty repartee, a sociopathic sidekick and a gourmet’s palate. In the course of six subsequent novels, Cole has become his own man, maturing to the point of not only entering a serious romantic relationship but eagerly anticipating the joys of family life.

In Crais’ latest, “Indigo Slam” (can “Chartreuse Crunch” be far behind?), the main mystery centers on an unemployed printer who has gone missing, leaving his three children in the lurch. Fifteen-year-old Teri Hewitt, oldest of the trio, hires Cole to find her father. The twisty trail leads to Seattle and includes bouts with both the Russian Mafia and U.S. marshals. As it unfolds in the author’s smooth and streamlined style, the story would have been strong enough to hold its own in the golden age of the mystery novel. But today’s readers crave personal involvement, and Crais provides a compelling subplot concerning the efforts of the woman Cole loves to move to the West Coast to be near him.

The fly in the ointment is the woman’s ex-husband, a Louisiana oilman with far-reaching clout. He’s kept at bay in “Indigo Slam.” But he threatens to make trouble in future volumes. Cleverly, Crais has come up with the perfect formula for ending one book on a satisfying note while tweaking our interest in the next one.

Hornsby is another novelist mindful of the importance of a personally involved protagonist, in her case documentary filmmaker Maggie MacGowen. The difference is that this involvement isn’t merely tangential to the main mystery; it is the main mystery. In “Telling Lies” (1993), it was the murder of her sister that sent Maggie sleuthing. In her last adventure, “77th Street Requiem,” her documentary on a 20-year-old unsolved murder had its negative effect on her significant other, LAPD detective Mike Flint.

But none of the previous novels has involved MacGowen’s personal life as much as the new “A Hard Light.” At its start, MacGowen is under considerable pressure. She’s recently experienced a miscarriage, her teenage daughter wants to go away to school, Flint’s about to retire, she’s fed up with her job and she’s trying to decide if she should sell her old house in San Francisco. Then there’s also the problem that will form the basis for the book: An old, dear Vietnamese friend has been attacked in her home, and Maggie has agreed to use her resources to track the attacker. This search excavates old crimes and old wounds going back to the fall of Saigon and places MacGowen, her daughter and her ex-husband in jeopardy.

This is quite a burden for one heroine to handle. But with some assistance from Flint, family, friends and particularly a dedicated bus driver who aids her in a harrowing escape from a homicidal trio, she emerges with skin intact. Hornsby has created a true heroine for our times--a professional woman who is intelligent, feminine but tough, clever without resorting to cuteness and as resourceful as a Navy SEAL with a Swiss army knife. Long may she survive.