Book reviewer ANNA CREER looks at three British crime novels… a university thriller, a policeman with a tragicomic approach to crime and the mystery of a missing mother.

THE best of these crime novels is Nicci French’s latest novel, Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?, which was published at Christmas 1990 with the 50th Alec Salter’s birthday party.

It quickly becomes clear that all is not well in the Salter family. The children, 15-year-old Etty and her three older brothers, are suspicious of their father, but adore their mother Charlotte.

Charlotte is admired by everyone. “She loves life. She loves people. Above all, she loves her four children.” But she doesn’t show up for her husband’s birthday party and her children search desperately for her for days. Charlotte Salter has disappeared without a trace.

Thirty years later, Etty returns to her parents’ house because her father, now over 80, suffers from dementia and moves into a nursing home.

Etty has changed. The “eager creature” she once was is now a lawyer, “feisty, cool and tough.” Etty has joined her brothers in clearing out her father’s house and arranging its sale.

However, her childhood friends Greg and Morgan Ackerly decide to start a podcast about Charlotte’s disappearance in order to solve the mystery. Inevitably, a murder occurs and the astute Detective Inspector Maud O’Connor from London turns up.

This is a clever, beautifully written crime novel about a family and community torn apart by tragedy.

Award-winning crime writer Louise Welsh is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, so it’s no surprise that the university at the centre of her latest novel, To the Dogs, seems entirely authentic.

Despite being the son of a criminal hardliner, Professor Jeff Brennan is a successful academic. The chancellor of his university has indicated that Brennan is his preferred candidate to succeed him.

Brennan is already chairman of the powerful building procurement committee that must decide on the design and financing of the new teaching and learning center. But problems arise when a wealthy Saudi graduate offers a generous donation to finance the building. For some staff and students, this is blood money from a repressive regime.

Brennan also has personal problems. His wayward son is arrested for drug trafficking and when he violates bail conditions, he is taken into custody.

Eliot confesses to his father that he owes a lot of money to dangerous people and he fears for his life. After Eliot is placed in intensive care after an attack in prison, Brennan realizes that he is his father’s son, “who is willing to kill for his family. He would die for them too if that was what it took to protect them.”

“To the Dogs” is a thrilling exploration of the struggle of a decent man to protect his family from organized crime and his reputation from opposing forces within science.

MARK Billingham has been writing acclaimed and award-winning crime novels since 2001, when he first introduced his detective Inspector Tom Thorne in Sleepyhead. Eighteen more novels in the series followed, while David Morrisey played the role of Thorne in a television series.

In 2023, however, Billingham introduced a new detective in The Last Dance: DS Declan Miller, in the first part of a series set in Blackpool. The wrong hands is the second.

Billingham said he had “come to the conclusion that humour and seriousness are not mutually exclusive, and was eager to write something that had a more tragicomic tone than anything I had written before.”

He also says that it is “great fun to write about DS Miller” and that while crime novels are about violent death and its consequences, “that is not all there is to do in life or even in death. That is never everything there is, therefore there are also jokes”.

DS Miller is clever and unusual. He has pet rats, his hobby is ballroom dancing and then there are the dad jokes. His colleagues tolerate him because he is a genius at solving crimes.

However, there was also a tragedy in Miller’s life: his wife was killed during an undercover police operation and he is desperately trying to find her killer.

When a frightened young man brings him a briefcase containing a pair of severed hands, Miller knows that this is evidence of a contract killing by local crime boss Wayne Cutler. Miller suspects that Cutler ordered his wife’s death.

While Miller pursues Cutler’s assassin, the assassin Desmond Draper searches for his briefcase so he can be paid by Cutler.

Be warned, beneath the humour, The Wrong Hands is just as violent and brutal as most noir crime novels. Billingham will make you laugh and cringe.