Black Hearts

Doug Johnstone Orenda, £8.99

Doug Johnstone’s excellent series about Scottish matriarch Dorothy Skelf, who juggles a family funeral firm with private investigations, has been described as Six Feet Under meets Case Histories. It’s that and much more.

The author-musician’s thrillers offer moving, gritty and darkly funny takes on modern life, seen through the eyes of three generations of Skelf women, including Dorothy’s chaotic daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah.

Here, the Skelfs tangle with claims of a faked death (the opening sequence involving a punch-up over an open grave is delicious), an elderly man grieving for his dead wife whose ghost might be abusing him, and a stalker whose interest in Hannah is by turns sinister and ridiculous.

While Johnstone’s plots are edgy, page-turning and, in a crowded crime market, genuinely surprising, Dorothy, like her creator, is a drummer and the solid, dependable backbeat of the books is a poignant meditation on grief in all its forms. Utterly brilliant.