I’ve read all of Jan Brogan’s mysteries — Yesterday’s Fatal, A Confidential Source and Final Copy — and have enjoyed them all, but Teaser gets off to such a fast start that I think this may be her best yet. The suspense never lets up, the plot twists and turns, revealing sudden connections and deadly consequences, and Hallie Ahearn, reporter for the Providence Morning Chronicle, is suddenly so certain of her mission that she heads out into dangerous, uncharted waters full speed ahead.

Hallie’s a kick: acerbic, wary, dedicated to her craft, too caring to be cynical in a world of cutthroat journalists and all kinds of rotten business deals, recovering from her drug addiction after the death of her brother from a cocaine overdose, recovering from her gambling addiction — and probably such a good reporter because her career is one more addiction: to cracking those investigative stories and seeing them splashed across the front page.

Right from the beginning, Hallie stumbles upon a Web site that will lead her into the murky world of kiddie porn, webcams set up in skuzzy motels, yachts of the rich and infamous, and the inevitable politics of the newsroom. The fact that she’s shacked up with hunky Assistant Attorney General Matt Cavanaugh doesn’t help her investigation either. There are boundaries one shouldn’t cross.

“Dizzywon” on the Web leads her to Whitney at St. Olivia’s Catholic School, who tells her of her friend Lexie who’s somehow enslaved or controlled by the sleazy Russian Rurik, who wears South Park T-shirts and baggy jeans and sports a bleach-blonde hairdo.

Of course there’s more: a possible murder at the mall; the Newport personal trainer, Pauley Sponik, who’s into guns and ammo and perhaps pornography; Jonathan Frizell, a reporter at the Chronicle with no scruples whatsoever; the tough city editor, Dorothy Sacks, who wants to fire Hallie when she won’t let Lexie’s story go; and Walter, the former druggie, who owns cab companies and takes Hallie for target practice in Attleboro.

Through it all we get the lowdown on adolescent orgies, titillating Web sites, first-rate heroin that’s finding its way into Providence and environs, and Hallie’s own hopes and fears that propel her into outrageously dangerous and heart-stopping moments.

Brogan is a former Journal reporter who knows her way around a newsroom, and around Providence. I love the references to Andreas on Thayer Street and Rufful’s in Wayland Square, the Boulevard and Narragansett Bay, the seedier neighborhoods of the city, and condos on Elmgrove Avenue. Such details nail the tale to home turf, and that’s always fun.

Teaser is no teaser. It’s the real thing, fast, furious and disturbing, a yarn you’re compelled to read right up to the harrowing conclusion off Newport amid a threatening storm.

samcoale@cox.net