CRIME FICTION

ROBICHEAUX by James Lee Burke (Orion £19.99)

NoW aged 81, Burke is still among the finest American novelists writing today.

At once philosopher, historian, prose poet and peerless storyteller, Burke has created a string of characters who linger in the memory — none more so than Detective Dave Robicheaux from southern Louisiana and his friend, private investigator Clete Purcell.

The underside of life in New orleans is vividly revealed when a mob boss decides he wants to go into the movie business and sets out to enlist a local bestselling author — whose books have been bought by Hollywood — to help him do it.

Add in a wealthy young man with his eye on a seat in the U.S. Senate, with an enigmatic wife and a Trump-like line in demagoguery, and you have an epic story of greed, lust and power told with consummate skill.

PERFECT DEATH by Helen Fields (Avon £7.99)

THIS is the third outing for Scottish/French DI Luc Callanach in Edinburgh, and it confirms the arrival of an intriguing rival for Ian Rankin’s excellent Inspector John Rebus.

The DI comes with a past — a false rape allegation when he worked for Interpol in France, eventually dismissed, which saw him relocate to Scotland.

Together with his newly promoted senior officer DCI Ava Turner — who is finding her elevation lonely — he investigates a serial killer who takes tiny trophies from the victims.

The perpetrator is using poison to orchestrate a slow and painful death, the horrible reality of which dawns on the victims only at the last moment.

This is a sadist who takes pleasure from watching suffering. The killer is also smart, for the deaths look like suicides, as there are no marks on the bodies and no defence wounds. Stylish story-telling.

A MAP OF THE DARK by Karen Ellis (Mulholland £15.99)

THIS is a new departure for bestselling crime writer Katia Lief, writing under the pseudonym Karen Ellis. She has created a flawed new heroine in FBI agent Elsa Myers, who specialises in finding missing people, especially children.

She agrees to look for teenager Ruby, who has gone missing from a respectable suburb of New York. It takes some time for Myers to realise this apparently well-behaved teen may have a secret dark side and she may not have disappeared willingly.

It emerges that there may be a serial predator at work who has been abducting and killing teenage girls for years.

But Myers has her own demons to grapple with, including a violent mother, an appetite for self-harm and strained family relationships.

Compellingly told, with a striking sting in the tail.