Whenever authors interrupt a conventional plot to send their series sleuth to some exotic clime, you tend to suspect them of writing off a vacation as a research trip. Michael Connelly doesn’t quite put that suspicion to rest with Nine Dragons, in which he takes a long pause from an investigation into the murder of an old Chinese shopkeeper in Los Angeles and dispatches his detective, Harry Bosch, on a daredevil mission to Hong Kong. But Connelly goes on to resolve both Harry’s home-turf case and that nasty business in Hong Kong in his customary ­double-barreled style of action and intelligence. So let’s just say that a good writer can get away with just about anything he wants to.

The center of the book is a breathless, bloody quest through a city Bosch barely knows, a teeming metropolis of skyscrapers and high finance in the midst of celebrating the ancient Festival of Hungry Ghosts. It's a foray outside his usual haunts that works, and one that takes him into new emotional territory as well.

Harry's personal and professional lives overlap in the engrossing Nine Dragons, the 15th novel — and one of the best — in this series. Nine Dragons works as a gripping police procedural, an intense character study and an international thriller. The novel also explores a man learning to become a father, serves as a travel guide to the back streets of Hong Kong police and provides an in-depth look at Los Angeles' Asian community.

To say that "Nine Dragons" is coiled tight with suspense understates Connelly's accomplishment in portraying Bosch at the cusp of a new world... And though Connelly remains a master at detailing the intricacies of "the job," it is Harry's longing for reunion and connection with his ex-wife and daughter, the overwhelming vulnerability he feels as a father, that makes "Nine Dragons" another standout in the series that should satisfy all readers, whether they are new to Boschworld, occasional visitors or devoted denizens.

The appearance of a third Connelly title in a year would be excellent news if Nine Dragons, his latest offering, didn't read like it had been scribbled during a red-eye from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, the two cities where the slapdash action unfolds.