[Lawrence Block’s] Hit Me hits shelves on the heels of the release of Walter Mosley’s new e-book,The Parishioner. Mosley is most famous for his Easy Rawlins mystery series—Devil in a Blue Dress was adapted into a film starring Denzel Washington. In Mosley’s new book, Xavier Rule is a reformed gangster attempting to transform his life from criminality to responsibility under the guiding hand of Father Frank, a mysterious and often autocratic preacher at a secluded church in California. …

Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch series and The Lincoln Lawyer, which served as the basis for the movie starring Matthew McConaughey, navigates noir with a spiritual compass, and, like Mosley, uses crime not only to tell a suspenseful story but also to provoke the reader into evaluating evidence demonstrating the veracity of concepts far larger than any criminal case. The search for redemption and the opportunity for moral transformation provide the pulse to Connelly’s fiction. Mickey Haller, the protagonist of The Lincoln Lawyer, believes that there is “nothing scarier than an innocent client,” and is content to represent obvious criminals, steadily amassing wealth as a defense attorney. When he discovers that he was partially responsible for the conviction of an innocent man, and when he is forced to confront the pure evil of a guilty man, he surrenders to a moral calling. He determines that his life must have meaning.

Connelly’s most famous character, Harry Bosch, is named after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose religious paintings depict the hellish consequences of earthly sins and, with a frightening blend of realism and surrealism, took on apocalyptic dimensions in their representation of spiritual torment, the battle for justice, and the judgment of God. The homicide detective, like the painter, is motivated by a sense of fairness formed by faith and a nonnegotiable moral code. His stone-cold consistency is the source of his virtue and his vice—he is comfortable with bending the law in an “ends justifies means” philosophy of law enforcement.

Connelly and Mosley prove that hands of sufficient delicacy and muscularity can transform the genre of crime fiction into the art of literature. No man is more adept at accomplishing such a feat, however, than James Lee Burke. Burke is the winner of two Edgar Awards and is most famous for chronicling the life of David Robicheaux, a New Orleans homicide detective turned New Iberia sheriff’s deputy. Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic and practicing Catholic who is married to a former nun and is guided by a system of philosophy that combines hardboiled realism and incorruptible mysticism. Burke’s stories might begin with a simple homicide or rape but ultimately feel as if they are anecdotes from the Book of Revelation.

The Tin Roof Blowdown, released in 2007, is set in the Armageddon atmosphere of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Robicheaux must apprehend a pair of rapists, prevent a vigilante from creating more death and destruction, and save the life of a priest friend with a morphine addiction. Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest are equal in the eyes of God. The rapist hand-delivers a letter of apology to try to make amends for a crime that can likely never be forgiven, and he prays for forgiveness and redemption before dying. In one of the most moving conclusions to any book, Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest, who died in the days after the hurricane, are “safe inside a pewter vessel that is as big as the hand of God.” …

“Learn to love sinners.” That’s Catholic priest and author Robert Barron’s advice to his seminary students if they ever hope to become effective priests. God is not dead in literature. He is hiding in the stories of sinners.