Killer plots fire the imagination

You’ll find murder, malice and mayhem in our choice of the best new thrillers...

THE LANTERN

MEN ★★★★ Elly Griffiths

(Quercus, £18.99) NORTH Norfolk is about as sleepy a place as you will find on a map.At least it was until the arrival of Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist with an uncanny knack of digging up hidden bodies – and trouble for herself. In The Lantern Men, Dr Galloway returns to expose more dark deeds along the wild coastline.

Convicted serial killer Ivor March summons Dr Galloway to his prison confines with the promise of revealing more bodies buried on Norfolk’s shores. So she is soon unearthing not only murder victims’ bones but also the secrets of the Lantern Men, sinister gangs who shine their eerie lights across the dangerous marshes to lure unwary travellers to their deaths.

This is the 12th Dr Galloway mystery by the prolific Griffiths and the archaeologist is reunited with former colleagues in Norfolk’s Serious Crimes Unit, led by the mulish DCI Harry Nelson – who also happens to be the father of Dr Galloway’s nine-year-old daughter.

Then a fresh corpse turns up with identical features to the imprisoned March’s preferred victims – leggy, good-looking, blonde.Yet how could March have struck while incarcerated? Have the deadly lights of the Lantern Men been rekindled?

Once again, Elly Griffiths delivers witty, insightful and brilliant storytelling as the redoubtable Dr Galloway burrows away to expose the Lantern Men’s dark secrets. SW

THE GUEST LIST

★★★★★ Lucy Foley

HarperCollins, £12.99 ON A remote island off the west coast of Ireland, 13 guests gather for the society wedding of the year asWill Slater, a Bear Grylls-style TV adventurer, marries Jules Keegan, journalist and daughter of a media mogul.

But as an Atlantic storm starts to unleash its fury on the uninhabited island and the guests find themselves cut off from the rest of the world, long-buried secrets and grudges are brought to the surface and tempers begin to fray.

The wedding is already teetering on the edge of ruin after the cake is cut as power cuts plunge the island into darkness. But then one of the guests is found dead, leaving the rest trapped with a killer.

The Guest List is the hotly anticipated follow-up to Foley’s 2019 bestselling crime debut The Hunting Party – and her fans will love this.

Masterfully plotted and paced to keep readers guessing until the grand reveal, her second modern take on the “closed-room” murder-mystery is clever, absorbing and great fun. JC

THE LAST DAY

★★★★ Andrew Hunter Murray

Hutchinson, £12.99 THE year is 2059 and the Earth has stopped turning, plunging half of the planet into an endless frozen night with most of the rest scorched by the relentless sun. Only in a slim twilit region, which includes Britain, Scandinavia and part of Russia, can life survive.

Ellen Hopper, a young scientist studying the new Atlantic tidal patterns from an oil rig, is summoned back to London by her Oxford University professor and mentor.

He is dying and, under intense scrutiny from the security services in a deeply isolationist Britain, he entrusts her with a clue to a dangerous secret that could change the fate of the human race.

Those in power will kill to conceal this secret, forcing Ellen to endanger everyone she turns to for help as she vows to bring the truth into the light.

The Last Day is a brilliant debut which blends apocalyptic drama with a tale of espionage, keeping readers on tenterhooks following Ellen’s fraught journey through a Britain struggling to survive extreme climate change. Fans of Robert Harris will love it. JC

THE MEMORY

WOOD ★★★★ Sam Lloyd

Bantam Press, £12.99 LONELY 12-yearold Elijah has been living in The Memory Wood for as long as he can remember. Elissa, a 13-year-old chess prodigy, has only just arrived but will do anything she can to escape.

Elissa has been chained by her abductor in an underground bunker which Elijah calls “The

Gingerbread House” and, when he stumbles across her, he refuses to alert the police.

Elijah is desperate to have a friend so he doesn’t want Elissa to leave.And since she’s not the first girl he’s found in the woods, he knows how escape attempts can end.

As her abductor’s behaviour grows more erratic, Elissa realises that outwitting her strange friend Elijah is her only hope of survival.

Their game of cat-and-mouse, where nothing is as it seems, will determine whether they ever leave The Memory Wood.

This darkly chilling and original novel gets off to a slow start but a series of twists keeps readers captivated until a shocking climax. JC

WATCHING FROM THE DARK

★★★★

Gytha Lodge

Michael Joseph, £12.99

AFTER Aidan Poole logs on to his laptop late at night to Skype his girlfriend Zoe, she discovers

an intruder in her flat. He listens helplessly to the sound of a violent struggle, before a chilling silence falls.While desperate to know whether she is OK,Aidan hesitates before calling the police, making an anonymous 999 call.

Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens and his team find Zoe’s body in her flat and her murder has been made to look like suicide.As his team try to work out why Aidan was so reluctant to come forward, they discover a number of people with an unhealthy reliance on Zoe’s kindness. Yet lurking within this group is a cold-hearted killer determined to get away with murder.

The follow-up to last year’s bestselling debut She Lies InWait is a satisfyingly complex whodunnit that will keep readers gripped and baffled in equal measure. And Lodge always keeps the victim at the centre of the story, making this a thriller that should not be missed.

THE NOSTRADAMUS

CURIOSITY ★★★★ Colin Edmonds

(Caffeine Nights, £9.99) WHEN seemingly impossible crimes plagueVictorian London, baffled Special Branch officers recruit two young music hall magicians to solve them.Who better to expose trickery and sleight of hand than stage conjurors?

Super-bright Michael Magister and fearless Phoebe Le Breton are tasked with explaining the puzzling lockedroom deaths of two high-profile astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

Scotland Yard are stumped. Is it a serial killer on a gruesome spree or is there a supernatural force at work? Seances, spirits who foresee the future and a kaleidoscope of Victorian celebrities all play their part in a pacy narrative peppered with trivia and laugh-out-loud gags (Edmonds was Bob Monkhouse’s joke writer, after all).

This is the third novel in the Steam, Smoke & Mirrors murder mystery series: a foggy, gaslit world of period conspiracies which seamlessly blur fact with fiction. Smart plotting and a deft line in misdirection make The Nostradamus Curiosity a satisfying page-turner.

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