SNAP ★★★★★ by Belinda Bauer Bantam Press, £12.99

BELINDA Bauer’s rogues’ gallery of insidious villains marks her out as one of the great purveyors of the modern crime thriller.

In her latest offering, Snap, she entwines emotions with the skill of a noose-maker. The reader is revolted by the culprit in a spate of break-ins, the euphemistically named Goldilocks who leaves homes pillaged and desecrated.

Then Bauer turns that disgust on its head to evoke sympathy and compassion for this 14-yearold burglar who is suffering the trauma of a terrible crime.

Goldilocks is sinister and conniving, earning his nickname from a ghastly craving to sleep in victims’ beds. But we learn that this stems from a longing for domestic sanctuary. When you have suffered as much as Goldilocks, finding somewhere cosy to sleep becomes all the more fathomable. So Bauer’s narrative of murder, childhood innocence and familial devotion turns this most accomplished, if surprising, of public enemies into a figure to pity rather than scorn.

Then his skills as a cat burglar uncover a clue that exposes a true monster, one whose atrocious crime has taken a heavy toll.

For Detective Chief Inspector John Marvel, catching Goldilocks in the act is a chance for redemption. Marvel has swapped the mean streets of metropolitan Lewisham for the bucolic boredom of rustic Tiverton, his police career decaying more quickly than a rancid corpse.

Marvel by name, if not by nature, this brontosaurus of a murder squad detective with his ashtray breath and ill-fitting suits is the best fictional cop on the current crime fiction beat: archaic, brutally brusque and with more hunches than a Quasimodo convention.

Marvel and his team of rustic detectives set out to seek justice for Goldilocks’ victims. But they find themselves forging an unholy alliance to unmask a killer and ensure the prolific but damaged cat burglar lives happily ever after.

Bauer ensures the tension balances on a knife edge. Literally.