Sweet and Vicious by David Schickler. Dial Press, 2004. $23 — 256 pp.

How To Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward. MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2004. $24 — 290 pp.

Codex by Lev Grossman. Harcourt, 2004. $24 — 368 pp.

Though some writers, critics and readers have attacked mainstream novelists as being occasionally deficient in craft and technique, mangling their grammar and syntax, the truth is that many writers today are masters of style, commanders of the rules of English usage who could spot a dangling participle or a comma splice a mile away. Most writers care intensely about the mechanics of their craft; many writers have graduated from rigorous academic programs or have earned a master’s in writing. Whatever the case, writers who attend such programs are taught the basics of writing.

Three new novels bear out my contention. David Schickler’s Sweet and Vicious tells the story of Grace McGlone, a young woman living in a small Wisconsin town, a woman who’s experienced a religious conversion of sorts — she’s “trying for heaven,” though by any standard of nearly any religion on the face of the earth, Grace has some odd ways of seeking the celestial — and of Henry Dante, the mob hit man who is on the run from his former employers. Schickler’s solid sense of prose rhythms can be encountered on nearly every page of this book. He also does a remarkable job giving us the viewpoints of the main characters, switching from third-person to first-person narrative and even changing his style slightly to put that style more in accord with the scene’s protagonist. His ability to create suspense — the gangsters seeking Grace and Henry nearly catch them several times — adds enormously to the pleasure of this book.

How To Be Lost is Amanda Eyre Ward’s novel of a troubled family whose difficulties increase immensely after Ellie, the youngest girl of the family, is kidnapped. We follow the struggles of the Winters family through the eyes of Caroline, the oldest daughter who, in spite of her early promise as a musician, becomes a cocktail waitress after leaving college. As we follow Caroline’s final search for her youngest sibling — the middle sister, Madeline, is trying for legal purposes and for her own peace of mind to have Ellie declared dead — Ward’s vibrant, gripping style turns her story into a vivid account of a woman looking both for her self and for her sister.

The DaVinci Code sparked an interest in the past and the esoteric, and several novels have appeared in the last year that tell similar stories of investigators discovering ancient secrets in paintings or historical writings. Lev Grossman’s Codex (ISBN 0-15-101066-8, $24) is the story of Edward Wozny, a young banker on the fast track, and Margaret Napier, a scholar of medieval literature, who team up to track down a medieval codex, which in this case means both an ancient manuscript and a book written in code. Though Grossman follows a path by now familiar to most readers of such fiction — Wozny and Napier become lovers, the code has vast implications for their own lives and careers, Napier gives us several classes in medieval literature — Codex offers readers a darker, richer ending than other books of its type.

Such high praise comes with a caveat. In our 21st century society, we prize technology, sometimes at the expense of realism and truth. We make movies in which the hero runs for days through burning buildings, gunfire, and exploding cars, yet never seems frayed or tired. We tell stories in literature and in film in which the plot, if we explore beneath its surface, doesn’t always make complete sense.

The three books above, wonderfully written with attractive protagonists, all fail at some level when we examine the plot or assess the way in which a character responds to a certain person or situation. In Sweet and Vicious, for example, there is a scene where a criminal and Henry both agree to drop their guns and fight hand to hand in front of an enormous crowd of spectators. The silliness of this scene — where are the security guards that are part of any such event? why would the criminal agree to give up his gun? — is heightened by the dialogue when Henry calls his opponent “a two-bit excuse for a master’s student.” People punching away at each other simply don’t talk that way. In How To Be Lost, Caroline goes on a date with a man named Anthony, who has known her family for years. On the date, she learns that Anthony was once married, but that his wife died in the 9/11 attacks. Wouldn’t someone in her family have mentioned this fact to Caroline? Edward, the bright, boyish hero of Codex, forgets to sign out at a library, an act which he understands is crucial to his deception of the library staff. His carelessness in this scene is out of character and simply isn’t believable.

In all three books coincidence plays too powerful a role. Coincidence should be allowed a place in fiction — we’ve all experienced it — but not as frequently as it is played out here. In Sweet and Vicious, Henry and Grace both happen to visit a Wyoming spa at the exact same time as their murderous pursuers. How To Be Lost contains numerous coincidences: Ellie disappears on the exact same day that she and her sisters plan to run away from home; an important visitor happens to show up at a rare family supper at the end of the book; Caroline’s mother flips through a magazine and finds a picture of Ellie at a rodeo; Ellie happens to read one of her sister’s fliers. In Codex, Edward and an acquaintance from college both happen to do business with the wealthy family that owns the manuscript. A computer genius involved with the family also knows Edward and his best friend. Edward just happens to meet Margaret Napier while researching Gervase of Langford.

Perhaps writers simply hope that the reader will overlook such implausibilities. Perhaps editors are too awed by the story and fine prose to notice them. Whatever the case, such logical inconsistencies may be one more indication that our society values surface over substance, slick appearance over hard truth.

(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher who can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)