After a four-year hiatus to write two nonseries books, Sara Paretsky brings back Chicago detective V.I. (Vic) Warshawski in <strong>&ldquo;Hardball&rdquo;</strong> (446 pages; Putnam; $26.95). Warshawski&rsquo;s latest case promises little money, lots of headaches and the risk of permanently destroying her family. </p><p>In August 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. attended a civil rights march in Chicago&rsquo;s Marquette Park. The march turned into a riot, during which a charismatic young woman was murdered. The cops arrested a member of a group of young men providing protection for King. After a long interrogation, the guy confessed and went to prison. In the intervening 40 years, the event was pretty much forgotten. </p><p>But not by everyone. Shortly after the riot, Lamont Gadsden, one of the young men, disappeared. His elderly mother and aunt hire Vic to learn what happened to Lamont. Her investigation turns up a connection to her own family: Her uncle Peter had been at the march that day, and her father was the arresting officer. </p><p>Now Peter is an executive with a Kansas City meat company, and his daughter, Petra, has moved from Overland Park to Chicago to work on the Senate campaign of a young up-and-comer. The guileless Petra gossips about V.I.&rsquo;s investigation to friends on the Web and around her office, and her talk attracts the attention of those desperate to keep the truth about what happened at Marquette Park a secret. When Petra disappears, V.I. is in a race to find her cousin before harm can come to her. </p><p>Paretsky, who grew up in Kansas, skillfully juxtaposes the politics and sensibilities of the &rsquo;60s against today&rsquo;s political climate. Welcome back, V.I. </p><p>&bull;&bull;&bull;</p><p>Stores don&rsquo;t stock Mother&rsquo;s Day cards for the women who populate Sophie Hannah&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Wrong Mother&rdquo; (415 pages; Penguin Books; $15 paperback). Mothers such as Geraldine Bretherick, who feels such hatred toward her 6-year-old daughter, Lucy, that she&rsquo;d like to &ldquo;shake her until her teeth fell out.&rdquo; Or Geraldine&rsquo;s friend Cordy who, when she leaves her husband for a man she&rsquo;s known for two weeks, plans to leave her daughter behind as well, disguising her desire to be rid of her as an unselfish desire to keep the child with her father. (&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t live with myself if I took her away from him.&rdquo;) Or Sally Thorning, so overwhelmed by her own children that she doesn&rsquo;t tell her husband that a business trip has been canceled so she can get away by herself. </p><p>The first night Sally is gone, she begins a torrid affair with a man she meets at the hotel&rsquo;s bar. The man is Mark Bretherick, husband of Geraldine and father of Lucy. When Sally later sees on the news that Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick are dead, she is stunned. Her disbelief turns to fear when she sees the grieving Mark Bretherick &mdash; a man she does not recognize. Her lover was an impostor, and Sally suspects he may have had something to do with the murders. </p><p>Told through Sally&rsquo;s voice, the book combines the tension typical of British mysteries with the novel, though repugnant, twist of mothers who hate and resent their children. </p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Stray bullets</span></strong></p><p><strong>&bull;&ldquo;Rough Country,&rdquo;</strong> by John Sandford (388 pages; Putnam; $26.95): The rakish Virgil Flowers is a bit out of his element when a woman is murdered at a women-only resort. </p><p><strong>&bull;&ldquo;Evidence,&rdquo;</strong> by Jonathan Kellerman (358 pages; Ballantine Books; $28): Detective Milo Sturgis works with psychologist Alex Delaware to solve the murders of a young couple found on the construction site of a ritzy mansion.