An artistically gifted teenage boy disappears. A few days later, a pious old man who befriended the boy is thrown from his apartment window and impaled on a wrought-iron fence.

		"Hard, Hard City" By Jim Fusilli (Putnam, $24.95)

So begins Jim Fusilli's third Terry Orr private eye novel, set on the urban terrain of New York City and its suburbs.

Orr, who is still troubled by the infidelity and death of his wife, promises his prodigy of a daughter that he'll try to find her classmate. But he quickly learns, when the old man dies, that more is missing than a person.

A safe has been opened. Money and some envelopes have disappeared. And when Orr visits the boy's wealthy father, he gets a cold shoulder, literally and metaphorically -- bruises, stitches and a quick lesson in the complicity of cops and robbers.

He perseveres, however, especially when he learns that something in those missing envelopes might end the political career of his friend, Sharon Knight, a gay district attorney.

Orr gets banged around again, finds more bodies, some alive, and enlists old friends and associates in his quest.

If all this sounds to you like generic, tough-guy fiction, you'd be only partially right. There are some extras that establish Fusilli's individuality.

Terry returns obsessively to the shocks caused by his wife's death. His self-questioning and low self-esteem are signs of his inability to move on, even though a fine woman wants him. And then there's his relationship with his daughter and her bright friend, Daniel Wu.

Also, there's an element of the TV sitcom that softens, perhaps too much, Fusilli's hard, hard city.