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  December 2008 Issue

When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself ... Expertly read by James Macpherson, who played DCI Jardine in the long-running TAGGART series for sixteen years. A beautiful package, just right for a long car journey or simply to listen to in the comfort of your own home when there's nothing to interest you on the box. Rebus is one of the finest detective creations of the modern era, and this audio version is absolutely enthralling.

LEE WEEKS: THE TRAFFICKED

DETECTIVE JOHNNY MANN IS BACK Missing children. An evil racket. A race against time ! Summoned to meet his boss, rebellious Detective Johnny Mann expects to be told that he is being demoted. Instead he is ordered to lead the investigation into the kidnapping of Amy Tang - the illegitimate daughter of a major player in the skin trade, CK Leung. Mann is reluctant to help - he has crossed paths with CK before- but he has no choice. Nine-year-old Amy is the third child to be kidnapped and held for a vast sum of money, but while the other two children were released after the vast ransom was paid, Amy is still being held captive. Mann's investigation takes him to London, where he teams up with DC Becky Stamp. Within days of his arrival, an arson attack kills twelve women and children. The charred bodies of the victims are found chained to their beds - their injuries rendering them identifiable! What is the link between the kidnapping of Amy in Hong Kong and the deaths of these women and children and can Mann discover the truth before it's too late.Prepare to be terrorised all over again with this disturbingly addictive thriller from the writer hailed as the female James Patterson. Superb. Not my cup of tea but the writing is first class; it's simply the story-matter that I find disturbing.

Stephen King: Just After Sunset (Hodder HB)
What would you do if your everyday world were turned upside down in an instant? Here are twelve riveting stories about relationships with unexpected twists. Be very careful what you wish for. Read about the acts of kindness from strangers: ‘workmen’ who intervene in the obsessive exercise regime of a middle aged artist in Stationary Bike; the unexpected visitor, a blind girl, whose kiss saves a dying man; a mute hitchhiker who helps a driver get over his wife’s affair. There are tales of obsession and fights for power: The Gingerbread Girl runs and runs to ease her pain; two neighbours contesting for a piece of land get into A Very Tight Place and a man who witnesses an act of domestic violence in a Rest Stop needs to step into his identity as a crime writer if he’s to intervene. Then there are the unexpected outside events which turn people’s worlds upside down or the right way up: a young couple, David and Willa who are derailed on a train find themselves seeking the bright lights in a nearby town – and playing the jukebox, for eternity; an older couple want to punctuate the banal humdrum with something unusual – until it happens. The King is back, all's right with the world. This will chill your bones for sure - my favourite was the Cat from Hell. Perfection. He makes it look so easy...

JAMES SHEEHAN: THE LAW OF SECOND CHANCES

A rich man parks his expensive car in downtown New York. As he gets out of the car, he is surprised to see a young man in front of him, holding a gun. No need to panic. He's been in this situation before. It's surely about money, and therefore negotiable - isn't it? There's a sharp crack of a gun and then silence. A week later a small time crook has been arrested for murder. Two eye witnesses have put him at the scene of the crime, but did he pull the trigger? He's facing death row and if there's to be a law of second chances, he needs a good lawyer fast. Fast-paced, great dialogue, fascinating plot. All the ingredients are there. I think this is a paperback reissue, not that it makes any difference.

ELFRIEDE JELINEK: GREED

Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life - at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty - particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps...Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught.A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, "Greed" is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since "The Piano Teacher". But as always Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, and the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, "Greed" is another chapter in Jelinek's chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria. Sorry, I just can't get on with these foreign crime stories - I have to know where it is the action is taking place. Now English writers taking me to foreign climes is a different kettle of fish - how pathetic of me is that?

JOHN MACKEN: BREAKING POINT

Reuben Maitland is a forensic scientist forced to work outside of the law. Fired from his job with the CID, he takes work where he finds it. But when he discovers that his long-abandoned work on Behavioural Profiling, to predict latent homicidal behaviour from people's DNA, is being put back on track at his old unit GeneCrime, he knows he has to act. Rogue elements within GeneCrime believe that prevention is better than cure, and are using Reuben's research to hunt down and incite innocent people beyond their breaking point. Reuben turns to the one person in GeneCrime he can trust, DCI Sarah Hirst.But the GeneCrime unit is frantically trying to stop a seemingly invisible killer who strikes in the middle of the day on busy Tube lines. As the bodycount escalates, London life threatens to grind to a halt and panic begins to rise. Drawn back into GeneCrime by his feeling for Sarah Hirst, Reuben starts the hunt for the people misusing his technology. Only Reuben knows that the Behavioural Profiling technology is dangerously flawed, and innocent lives are threatened. But what he cannot know is that this hunt will lead him directly into the path of the Underground Killer. Paperback reissue