THE BEST NEW THRILLERS

The Comforts Of Home Susan Hill Chatto & Windus €26.59 Susan Hill’s charismatic hero, DC Simon Serrailler, is back. His last case left him hanging between life and death so The Comforts Of Home begins in intensive care, then heads off to a Scottish island and ends with a newly disabled Serrailler solving not one but two murder cases. Hill paints a powerful picture of a proud but damaged man trying to remake his role in the world.

Paris In The Dark Robert Olen Butler No Exit €15 Kit Cobb is an American newspaperman and part-time spy, based in Paris during the dark days of WWI. While working on a story about American ambulance men, he stumbles on an anarchist cell hell-bent on bringing the carnage of war into the heart of the city. This is a morally complex and beautifully written thriller with a delicately portrayed love story at its heart. A cut above.

The Syndicate Guy Bolton Point Blank €23.79 Guy Bolton’s splendid debut The Pictures wove a classic detective novel around the Mafia infiltration of pre-war Hollywood. This excellent sequel moves the action forward to 1947 and the real-life murder of mobster Bugsy Siegel. Former LAPD cop Jonathan Craine is forced out of retirement by the Las Vegas Mafia to find Siegel’s killer. If he fails, he dies. Brilliantly taut and atmospheric.

In A House Of Lies Ian Rankin Orion €28 Rebus is years into his retirement, and apparently resigned to his life being in ‘managed decline’. But when his former colleagues struggle to solve the decade-old murder of a private detective, who else are they going to call? This thoughtful addition to the consistently compelling series sees Rebus confronting both the police corruption of the past and the social media-fixated policing of today.