CRIME AND THRILLERS

GEOFFREY WANSELL

THE LATE SHOW

by Michael Connelly

(Orion €27.99)

THIS is my crime book of the year, written by one of the great practitioners of the craft.

It has been more than ten years since Connelly last introduced a major new character — back then it was the Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller.

Now it is Hawaiian-born surfing enthusiast Detective Renee Ballard, whose career has fallen under a cloud as a result of her sexual harassment claim against a former boss.

She finds herself working the graveyard shift out of the Hollywood station, where she catches two cases that haunt her.

It is superb storytelling built around a feisty, fresh character.

END GAME

by David Baldacci

(Macmillan €26.60)

AN EDGE-of-the-seat ride from one of the world’s thriller masters, this opens explosively on the London Underground, where trained assassin and government agent Will Robie is trying to stop an imminent terrorist attack.

The odds are 16-to-one against him, but he succeeds, only to find himself plunged into a frantic search for his CIA handler, who has disappeared in Colorado.

Will joins forces once again with fellow agent Jessica Reel. The heart-stopping action shows Baldacci is in fine form.

CHANCE

by Kem Nunn

(No Exit Press €12.60)

NOW a TV series starring Hugh Laurie, this tells the story of Dr Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist who unwisely becomes fascinated by his patient Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused but apparently schizophrenic wife of a Californian homicide detective, who also happens to be a violent and jealous man.

In his bid to help her, Chance treads the very edges of the law in the company of a street-wise young man known only as D, who is adept with a switchblade.

This is James M. Cain territory, twilight noir at its very best, where nothing and no one are ever what they seem.

THE DEATHS OF DECEMBER

by Susi Holliday

(Mulholland €11.20)

WHEN DC Becky Greene arrives at her police station in December, she is handed the mail to take up to the CID office.

One item is a plain envelope addressed to ‘a detective who knows what to do’.

She takes the envelope back to her desk and opens it. Inside is an advent calendar, but when she opens one of the small windows, Greene discovers not a nativity scene, but a crime scene — a tiny photograph of a dead body lying in a pool of blood.

The other windows reveal similar crime scenes, and so begins the hunt for a murderer who may have been secretly at work for 20 years.

Dark and satisfying, it is a fine antidote to Christmas cheer.