Sure, it happens at the movies all the time. Somebody jumps out of the darkness with a knife and we all shudder. A whole film genre has been based on such scares. But when was the last time that happened to you while reading a book?

For me, that happened just last week, at the halfway point of The Scarecrow (Little, Brown, $27.99) by Michael Connelly. Even though you know something is up, the moment that makes you jump and do your Good-God! James Brown impression hits you with the same shock and fear that grips the novel’s hero, Jack McEvoy.

Moments like that make you appreciate what a great novelist Connelly has become. His books will still be read 75 years from now in the same way that college students are required to read Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Connelly leaves most of his contemporaries in the dust.

The Scarecrow doesn’t feature Connelly’s main attraction, L.A. Detective Harry Bosch, but instead focuses on newspaper reporter McEvoy, the central character in Connelly’s The Poet and a supporting character in a couple of other Connelly books.

This story grows from the freak show that is the modern newspaper business. McEvoy is a dedicated and talented veteran journalist, so he is laid off from the Los Angeles Times and forced to train his young-sprout replacement, a naïve and ambitious rookie from the University of Florida. Connelly vents a lot about what’s happened to the newspaper business — he was an LA Times star for several years before becoming a novelist — but uses that heartbreak to open the door to yet another thrilling narrative. It’s a great tale about a cast-aside reporter on the trail of a bad-ass computer-whiz serial killer. That the book also shows evidence of the immorality of big-time journalism is an added bonus.

It’s a thrilling, masterful book and it reminds us of why we love to read: we love to get caught in the web by a brilliant storyteller. Connelly lives in the area and he has a few shoutouts to Florida homies that make the book even more fun.

It seems that it was just 20 minutes ago that Connelly published his last novel, The Brass Verdict, and he’s got another one — Nine Dragons, the latest Harry Bosch novel — coming out in October. Janet Maslin of the New York Times is always a tough review, but she praised The Scarecrow, then said at the end of her review that Connelly was too prolific, that he needed to slow down. But Dude — as long as the books are this good, please … please keep them coming.

We’ve said it before about Connelly: he’s so talented that he elevates the whole genre. But there’s only so much one writer can do.

Cemetery Dance (Grand Central Publishing, $26.99) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is hovering near the top of the New York Times best-seller list. It’s silly, far-fetched and fun and no one would mistake it for great literature. But once you start reading, you can’t put it down.

It comes with the required arresting opening: A happy couple relaxing at home, planning an anniversary celebration, to be followed by a Big Sex Night. Woman leaves to go pick up a surprise at the store. In her absence, a zombie shows up, carves the man to pieces and runs away … almost demanding to be seen. The zombie (zombii, we’re told it should be) is that dude from the apartment upstairs who shitcanned himself off the bridge a couple weeks back. How could a dead man be a killer?

The central attraction of Cemetery Dance is the Holmes-and-Watson pairing of effete FBI investigator Aloysius Pendergast and blue-collar Vinnie D’Agosta of the NYPD. The interplay between these two characters and the what-is-this-shit response to the zombie stuff keep you turning the pages.

We love stories. We always have. Cemetery Dance is a fun story, no doubt about it. You learn a lot about voodoo (we’ve been spelling that wrong too) and about old New York.

But The Scarecrow . . . whew. You can’t help but marvel how Connelly takes the concept of a mystery novel and takes it up to the next level.

BASEBALL TRAGEDY: My three little boys have discovered baseball, so we’ve been at the YMCA field a couple nights a week, cheering on miniature Braves, Royals and Yankees. We play catch at home and they’ve been begging to watch Field of Dreams with me, but I always cry at the end and it might fuck up the boys to see Daddy blubbering like a baby.

But there are real tears with Heart of the Game (Ecco Press, $24.99) by S.L. Price. It’s the story of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach killed by a hard-line foul ball.

Price works for Sports Illustrated, America’s best-written magazine (take that, New Yorker weenies), and the sheer craft in this book is enough to wither the ambition of any poor swine who ever sits down before a keyboard of letters.

We know the ending of the story before it begins, so Price brings Coolbaugh back to life, shows us his family, his childhood, his love of the game and his eventual heartbreak at its hands. Still, as a somewhat spurned and devoted lover, Coolbaugh stays with the game and eventually it kills him.

The greatest joy often causes the greatest pain, and Heart of the Game gives us evidence of that in abundance.

I might not have the boys read this one until they’re older, but I did make sure they all got new batting helmets.

TERRORISTS ‘N’ THE ‘HOOD: Two of last year’s best novels — both set in Florida — have just come out in paperback.

Andre Dubus III (rhymes with caboose) wrote The Garden of Last Days (W.W. Norton, $14.95) about what some of the 9-11 terrorists were up to in the week before they forced their way into the cockpits.

They spent time in South Florida strip clubs, and Dubus’ brilliant and brutal novel takes us into the minds of the terrorists, a stripper and a local loser seeking refuge at the Puma Club. The shifting narrative builds tension, and his insight into all the characters takes us into the dark corners of the soul.

Irvine Welsh is perhaps best known for Trainspotting, but that’s only one of his nine novels. Crime (W.W. Norton, $14.95) is a fish-out-of-water story as a transplanted Scottish detective, trying to escape the aftermath of a horrific crime back home, comes to Florida on vacation. Of course, he becomes involved in a Sunshine State crime-against-a-child, and Welsh takes us into the mind of this complicated and tortured soul.

COMING TO INKWOOD: Novelist Todd Shimoda signs his new book, Oh! A Mystery of Mon No Aware (Chin Music, $$22.50) at 6 p.m. on June 10 at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia Ave., in Tampa. The book is is described as “a compelling and fast-paced illustrated mystery of a young Japanese-American's self-discovery through Japanese suicide clubs, underground poetry, and the aesthetic of mono no aware (the sadness in beauty).”

COMING TO HASLAM’S: Novelist Wendy Wax signs Accidental Bestseller (Berkley, $15) at 3 p.m. on June 13 at Haslam’s Book Store, 2025 Central Ave, St. Petersburg.

William McKeen is chairman of the University of Florida’s Department of Journalism and author of several books, including the Hunter S. Thompson biography Outlaw Journalist.