Genre round-up — the best new crime thrillers

JK Rowling — in her crime-writing alter-ego of Robert Galbraith — recreates the spleen of internet trolls in her new book The Ink Black Heart (Sphere £25), and one senses the writer’s own views here, given her personal experience of clashes with transgender activists.

The novel has all the dexterous skill that has marked her series featuring Cormoran Strike, the war veteran private eye. Strike’s business partner Robin Ellacott is regretting that she turned away a terrified client, cartoonist Edie Ledwell, who was under online siege from a sinister figure known only as “Anomie” after she criticised the latter’s internet game.

Edie has been tasered and murdered in Highgate Cemetery, and Robin enlists Strike in a search for the identity of Anomie that involves some horrific findings.

While the mechanisms of the detective genre are handled with assurance, the motivating force here is a response to the clandestine world of those seeking to cancel their targets (the murdered woman is the creator of the eponymous cartoon “The Ink Black Heart”). With its striking Gothic underpinnings, the novel is a synthesis of traditional and modern elements, delivered with panache — but it might legitimately be asked if the book’s prodigious length (more than 1,000 pages) is really justified.

Doyens of the legal thriller Scott Turow and John Grisham have remained securely in place (with just the odd hiccup), and Turow’s new book Suspect (Swift £20) is a reminder of his expertise. Novice PI Clarice “Pinky” Granum is investigating a case involving police chief Lucia Gomez. A trio of male colleagues have levelled an accusation at her: that she has promised them career advancement in return for sexual favours. But does this gender-swapping of a “#metoo” scenario hold water?

Turow may have borrowed the name of his heroine from Thomas Harris’s Clarice Starling, but his punky bisexual heroine is drawn from Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. This is lively fare — but not quite vintage Turow.

To say that the response to Swiss novelist Joël Dicker’s The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair was divisive understates the case. The word “masterpiece” was used for its metafictional playfulness, but a host of naysayers also described it as clumsily written. Dicker’s The Enigma of Room 622 (MacLehose £20, translated by Robert Bononno) is likely to meet a similar response.

Here the author plays a direct role in the narrative, while the central story involves an unsolved murder being plundered for a novel, plus malfeasance in Switzerland’s biggest private bank. The plotting here has a labyrinthine complexity, leaving little time for character development, but those attuned to Dicker’s wavelength may enjoy the helter-skelter momentum.

Erin Kelly is a key practitioner of rigorous psychological crime, and The Skeleton Key (Hodder £16.99) is well up to par. An illustrated book (clearly inspired by Kit Williams’ 1970s success Masquerade) sets a treasure hunt in motion.

Decades later, artist Frank Churcher reveals the final clue that enthusiasts were seeking, but a TV presentation has disastrous consequences, and Frank and his family face a grim retribution. Kelly’s customary aptitude with different timeframes adds finesse to a forceful scenario.

Finally, two novels that prove the Nordic Noir boom is still resounding. Some aficionados would argue that the Swede Håkan Nesser is the most accomplished writer in the field today, and The Axe Woman (Mantle £18.99) is choice fare. Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti is back at work after personal tragedy, and his boss gives him a cold case to reintegrate him into regular duties.

In this book, after the disappearance of Arnold Morinder in 2007, a suspect is Ellen Bjarnebo, the notorious “Axe Woman” who dismembered the body of her husband. Is she really connected to the disappearance of Morinder? So much to praise here: the steady accumulation of suspense, the assured characterisation and the elegant prose, perfectly rendered by translator Sarah Death.

David Lagercrantz’s publishers have let it be known that the resident of 221b Baker Street is an inspiration for Dark Music (MacLehose £20), but the Doylean influences are freighted into a narrative that offers a cool examination of geopolitics.

The ratiocinator here is drug-using, music-loving Professor Hans Rekke, scion of a wealthy Stockholm family and an authority on interrogation techniques, while the Watson figure is community police officer Micaela Vargas, daughter of Chilean political refugees. A murder investigation with complex international tendrils is well handled by Lagercrantz, and Ian Giles provides an idiomatic translation.

Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films’

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