Death under the sign of the tower of Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, £22)
Jackson Brodie’s sixth book finds the private detective firmly on Agatha Christie’s – or even Cluedo’s – turf when Brodie is hired by two siblings to investigate the possible theft of a painting by their recently deceased mother. After some reluctant help from DC Reggie Chase, he begins to suspect that the theft may be connected to the disappearance of a Turner from Burton Makepeace, a nearby mansion. The owners have converted part of it into a hotel to make their crumbling estate financially viable. When Jackson and Chase arrive, they’re staging a murder mystery weekend with a group of unruly actors reciting hackneyed lines to a captive audience – quite literally, as a blizzard soon cuts off all escape routes and lines of communication. As sharp, droll and knowing as ever, Atkinson has great fun directing it; the supporting cast is great and the remorseful Brodie, who becomes increasingly aware of the past years, feels like an old friend.
Guilty By Definition of Susie Dent (Zaffre, £16.99)
Set in Oxford, in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary, lexicographer Dent’s debut novel is about the hidden lives of words and people, and makes wonderfully atmospheric use of the City of Dreaming Spires. It opens with the first of a series of bafflingly cryptic anonymous letters calling on senior editor Martha Thornhill and her colleagues to solve a murder. The allusions are to the disappearance of Martha’s older sister Charlie, who vanished more than a decade earlier when Martha was still at school. As the editors work through the fiendishly difficult clues, their investigation reveals that not only did golden girl Charlie have a dark side, but that she may also have been keeping an astonishing secret. Guilty By Definition may not be the most emotionally gripping novel you’ll read this year, but this astonishingly clever literary crime thriller will be a real stunner for logophiles and crossword fans alike.
Sanctuary of Garry Disher (Viper, £9.99)
Veteran Australian crime writer Disher’s latest novel centers on seasoned thief Grace, who grew up in foster homes – “in care” but without welfare – and is used to looking after herself. On the run from Adam, a former accomplice, she ends up in a small town in the Adelaide Hills, where she takes a job in Erin Mandel’s antique shop. The women form friendship and a more peaceful life beckons, but the past keeps threatening to catch up with them… Sanctuary is told from several perspectives, including that of Adam, now working off a debt to a horribly unscrupulous private detective, and that of the venomous Brodie Hendren, determined to track down and punish the woman who got away from him, and it takes a while for all the plot threads to converge. However, Disher keeps the various narrative panels moving with the skill of a master storyteller, crafting a compelling story with characters that range from morally dubious to completely untenable.
The auditor of Janice Hallett (Viper, £18.99)
Like her previous books, Hallett’s fifth novel presents the reader with a file of evidence. This time it begins with a message from an examiner who believes “something terrible may have happened” on the Multimedia Arts MA course at Royal Hastings University. Emails, essays and downloads from message groups follow as we get to know six students with varying skills and experiences, from established artist Alyson to Cameron, a stressed-out manager searching for a work-life balance. Soon, small seeds of distrust are sown within the group and it gradually becomes clear that in several cases the participants’ real reasons for taking the course are not those they state in their personal statements. The cracks really start to show when they team up to create an elaborate installation for their final assignment, at which point the plot twists and turns form a shaky heap as the tone becomes increasingly grim. A close reading is essential but worthwhile for this complicated and unconventional book that unfolds slowly.
Sounds like a plan from Pamela Samuels-Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith (Atria, £9.99)
Sounds Like a Plan is the first in a planned series by two award-winning American authors. Two young black Los Angeles private investigators, Mackenzie Cunningham and Jackson Jones, meet when they discover they have been hired by the same person. Shady lawyer Raymond Patterson wants them to find Ashley Cross, the missing 24-year-old daughter of one of his clients. The case seems simple enough, but the truth, as they discover when a third private investigator is found dead along with their quarry, is far more complicated and also far more dangerous. This first installment is a fast-paced read told from alternating perspectives, with the romantic tension of the attraction of opposites – Mackenzie comes from a privileged background, while ex-cop Jackson was raised by a working-class single mother – and plenty of action to make up for some rather clunky dialogue and characters that border on stereotypical.
