Sometimes, it all just goes wrong. No matter what the plans are, or what the vision is, or the dream, a single little step on a different path, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, and it can all curdle in a flash.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the new novel by Robert Ward, “Four Kinds of Rain” (St. Martin’s, 277 pages, $22.95).

Mr. Ward’s name may be unfamiliar to many mystery readers, as this is his first crime novel since the excellent “The Cactus Garden”came out in 1995. That very tough novel about a DEA agent trying to do his job by busting a drug smuggling ring made a lot of Top Ten lists that year but was followed only by “Grace” (1998), a fictional memoir of his grandmother, a civil rights activist in Baltimore.

Baltimore was also the setting for “Red Baker,” the angry and powerful saga that won the PEN West prize for best novel of 1985. Red Baker is a former steelworker unable to find work as his city phases out its industrial base, offering more and more service, technology, and information jobs for which he is both physically and temperamentally unsuited. It has recently been reissued in a trade paperback (St. Martin’s, 224 pages, $12.95) with a new introduction by Michael Connelly.

Much of Mr. Ward’s career has been spent in Hollywood writing TV movies and pilots, but mainly as a writer for “Hill Street Blues” and then as a writer and co-executive producer of the wildly successful “Miami Vice” series.

He certainly came back to the crime novel with a vengeance, producing a funny and nihilistic (no, they are not incompatible, not in the capable hands of this author — think “War of the Roses”) story of frustration, anger, helplessness, and revenge

Bob Wells appears almost to be a stereotype. A self-righteous left-wing psychotherapist who frequently reminisces about the good old days of the 1960s, when he felt really alive and dangerous, leading protests, doing drugs, battling with cops and capitalists — when he thought he could manipulate things that would help turn the world into a socialist utopia.

When he makes his first appearance, Bob is a pathetic loser. He has gambled away all of his own and his wife’s money, making it simple for her to come to the decision to leave him, and he is down to a single paying client while lamenting that he never “sold out” to take a solid corporate job.A major portion of his day is spent at The Lodge, a local bar, with his best friend, Dave, where once a week he plays in the bar band called The Rockaholics.

Because of Bob’s history of protests and civic disobedience, the highlight of which was punching a cop in the nose and breaking it, the local detectives enjoy harassing him, never letting up for three decades.Also no longer young, one of the cops is described as having “a lame comb-over, three or four lost strands that looked like broken feelers on an insect.”

A new girl singer joins the band, and Bob falls for her, and she for him, but she’s heard about his gambling habit and that he’s broke, so is reluctant to get too involved with someone too poor to support her. He decides to do something about it and concocts a brilliant scheme to steal a priceless artifact, a mask of an ancient Babylonian god named Utu, from one of his clients.And there it is: that first little step, the one leading down a quiet country lane that quickly morphs into a slick speedway that goes in only one direction.

The beauty of “Four Kinds of Rain” is the inner dialogue of Bob, who frequently blames his troubles on his belief that he is, and has been, too good, too decent, too generous in helping other people while forgetting to take care of himself. Choosing a life of crime, in his view, is perfectly justified, though it has its own, often unexpected, difficulties. As things begin to unravel, he muses:

That was the hardest part of criminal life. It was merciless. As an intellectual he had always railed against security, but now … now just a little wouldn’t be so bad. Like knowing you were going to live a whole day without a bullet in your back or a knife in your neck. That would be kind of … well, refreshing.

Still, he adapts pretty well to criminal activity, each escalation utterly necessary, as he sees it, since there had been no reward for his selflessness in attending to those in need at a free clinic. The profits of his nefarious scheme, he reckons, will enable him to help so many people, to do so much good in the world, that his eyes positively well up at the prospect of becoming the generous benefactor, finally receiving the glory to which it is clear he is so abundantly due. If there happen to be several cars, worldwide travel, fine dining, and expensive wines along the way, well, why shouldn’t he have them? Wasn’t he entitled?

The hilarity of an old Marxist thirsting for mind-exploding wealth while being lauded and loved for his good works permeates every page, though “Four Kinds of Rain” is not for the faint of heart.The levels of violence increase at a rate so dramatic that they become scenes from a particularly nasty cartoon, so excessively gross that you will either want to chuckle or upchuck.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.