Till death us do part...

THE INNOCENT WIFE by Amy Lloyd (Century £9.99)

THIS striking winner of the Daily Mail First Novel Competition — chosen from more than 5,000 entries — starts with an intriguing proposition.

What happens when 31-yearold Samantha, an ordinary school teacher in England, becomes obsessed with an American serial killer, convicted 20 years ago and sitting on Death Row?

Dennis Danson was just 18 when he was found guilty of the brutal murder of a young girl in Florida’s Red River County. Now his case has been in a TV documentary suggesting there was a miscarriage of justice.

No sooner has Samantha seen the programme than she becomes convinced Danson is innocent. She writes to him, and he replies with thoughtful, charming letters. Eventually, she decides to travel to Florida to visit him in jail.

Not long after she arrives he proposes marriage, and she accepts. Suddenly her old life in England is left far behind, and she is transformed into an active campaigner for her husband’s release.

The campaign works when someone else confesses to the crime, and Danson is released. But when the couple return to his former home, where the murder took place, Samantha begins to have doubts.

Written with panache, the book skilfully captures the nature of obsession and its consequences, and culminates in a climax Patricia Highsmith would have admired.

BLOODY JANUARY by Alan Parks (Canongate £12.99)

A DEBUT from a writer who seems set to become the latest star of Tartan noir — perhaps even a successor to the late, great William McIlvanney.

Dark, vicious and often terrifying, it is set in Glasgow in the first days of 1973, when a teenage boy shoots a young woman in the street in the centre of the city and then turns the gun on himself.

Detective Harry McCoy is sure this is no random act of violence, so begins to investigate. Where did the boy get the gun? Why did he choose this particular victim?

Gradually a picture of the seamier side of life begins to emerge from the shadows. Young women are abused by older, richer men, orchestrated by some of the most powerful people in Scotland’s second city, who have influential friends in the police.

Gripping, utterly authentic and nerve-jangling, this novel announces a fine new voice in crime writing.

DARK PINES by Will Dean (Point Blank £12.99)

A HAUNTING example of stylish storytelling set in the northern wilds of rural Sweden — and its forest in particular — this is, in fact, written by an Englishman, who went to live there himself in 2012.

This is his first book and, on this evidence, it will not be his last.

The heroine is Tuva Moodyson, a deaf young female reporter on the small town’s local paper, who is as superbly evoked as the forest she is forced to investigate when a man is found shot dead in its midst.

There are similarities to three murders that took place in the Nineties, and speculation that a serial killer may still be in the area intensifies when a second man is killed. All five victims had their eyeballs removed.

Whoever committed the crimes must be local, for this is an isolated town with few inhabitants.

Dean never lets the tension drop as his story grows ever more sinister.