Hard Latitudes

Set in 2004, Birtcher’s well-executed fourth Mike Travis crime thriller (after 2008’s Angels Fall) takes the former LAPD homicide cop from his home in Hawaii, where he has recently started chartering his 72-foot sailing yacht, back to Los Angeles, where his feckless businessman brother, Valden, needs his help. Valden, who has come to L.A. from New York for a political fund-raiser, has been caught on videotape cheating on his wife. Blackmailers are threatening to expose him unless he pays up soon. On hearing his brother’s appeal, Travis flies the next day to L.A., where he joins forces with an old cop friend, Hans Yamaguchi. Travis and Hans track down the blackmailers, but dealing with them only makes matters worse. Travis’s tale eventually merges with the tragic story of a young Chinese woman, May Ling, who was forced into sexual slavery in Macao in 1994. Readers will hope they don’t have to wait another seven years for the world-weary Travis’s next adventure. (May)