Little, Brown. 384 pp. $27.99

In Michael Connelly's new crime thriller Nine Dragons, Bosch is assigned to investigate the robbery-murder at Fortune Liquors in a rough South Los Angeles neighborhood. Once there, he recalls an earlier visit to the store during the 1992 L.A. riots. Bosch remembers entering the completely looted store and needing a cigarette desperately after dealing with the mayhem in the streets.

With the shelves made bare by looters, the elderly Chinese owner of the store pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and kindly gave Bosch the last cigarette from the pack. He also gave Bosch a book of matches that carried a motto: Happy is the man who finds refuge in himself.

Not a bad motto for a flawed, troubled, loner cop.

Named after the 15th-century Flemish artist who created chaotic, world-gone-mad paintings, Bosch has had a tough life. He became an orphan when his prostitute mother was murdered, and he grew up in a foster home. He later served in Vietnam, and his post-Vietnam career in the LAPD has seen as many battles with political and bureaucratic bosses as with bad guys.

His personal life, such as it is, has also been contentious, with a troubled marriage, divorce, and the shock of being informed that he had a daughter some years after the child was born.

In this novel, Connelly's 15th in the Bosch series, Bosch serves with the LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide Division and he is assigned to investigate the brutal shooting death of the kindly store owner. Bosch, a dedicated and driven detective who believes he works for the crime victims, has a personal code in which "everybody counts or nobody counts." To Bosch, the store owner counts.

The murder initially looks like a typical gangbanger robbery, but Bosch sees evidence that leads him and the other detectives toward a Triad shakedown attempt. Bosch calls in the assistance of a Chinese American detective from the LAPD's Asian Gang Unit, and together they track a suspected Triad gang member who may have been extorting money from the store owner.

Bosch, the tough-guy loner detective, is shaken from his sense of invulnerability when the investigation leads to the kidnapping of his daughter, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, a former FBI agent turned professional gambler.

Connelly has said that Bosch sees himself as a man on a mission. He sees himself as one who is skilled, tough and relentless enough to truly fight evil. To conduct that good fight, Bosch always felt he had to be "bulletproof," which to him meant being invulnerable.

But having discovered he has a daughter, Bosch becomes as vulnerable as any loving father. Thankfully, though, he remains skilled, tough and relentless, and he boards a plane to Hong Kong to personally rescue his daughter.

In Hong Kong, Bosch has only one day to find and rescue his child, aided by the girl's mother and a Chinese man who does security work for the casino. Their search leads them through the mysterious and ancient underworld of Hong Kong and Kowloon.

This novel has much more action than the usual Connelly thriller. Bosch takes no prisoners here, for his daughter's life and liberty are at stake.

The title of the novel, Nine Dragons, comes from Kowloon, an urban area off the main island of Hong Kong. Kowloon means Nine Dragons in Cantonese, and the dragons are represented by the eight visible mountain peaks there, plus the Chinese Emperor.

I visited Hong Kong as a young sailor many years ago, and Connelly vividly describes the sights, sounds and smells that I remember so well. I especially like his descriptions of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts (a good name for a future novel).

I also spent a year living in Southern California and many times visited Los Angeles, the city of Raymond Chandler's mean streets and Joseph Wambaugh's cops. Connelly, who worked as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, follows in their footsteps and captures the city, its inhabitants and its crime scene well.

Nine Dragons is a very good crime thriller.