Horror in the highlands in this month’s crime fiction: From The Shadows by G. R.
From The Shadows by G. R. Halliday (Point Blank £9.99, 432pp)
The strikingly tall and gangly, Inverness-born DI Monica Kennedy will become one of the most interesting new detectives on television when a series based on counsellor and psychotherapist Halliday’s first novel From The Shadows starts on Sunday as The Dark.
Fierce, determined and a single mother of a young daughter, Lucy, she has returned to the Highlands to be near her own mother, but is challenged by the dreadful crimes that can illuminate even that most beautiful part of Britain.
This novel charts her third case, the disappearance of teenage boys, who are found killed and mutilated, their bodies posed in remote locations. There is a serial killer at work. Eloquent, dark and frightening, this is storytelling with believable characters and a magnificent protagonist.
The Tailor by Tim Sullivan (Head of Zeus £16.99, 368pp)
Insensitive and often rude – partly because of his place on the autism spectrum – DS George Cross is one of the most iconic new detectives of recent years.
This, his seventh outing, sees him teamed with a new young female DC and asked to investigate the murder of a bespoke Bristol tailor, William Titcomb, on a train to Paddington. He is found dead with his throat cut in the toilet.
At first it looks like a robbery gone wrong, but Cross soon establishes that something more sinister lies behind the killing. This was an organised hit.
The tailor’s firm has connections with China, while Titcomb’s Chinese wife works for a shadowy electronics firm nearby. Intricate, funny and with a tantalising plot, Cross just gets better and better.
Under the Cold Bright Lights is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher (Viper £9.99, 352pp)
Retired police sergeant Alan Auhl is tempted back into the Australian police in his 50s to join a Cold Case Unit.
He’s an experienced homicide detective but the young officers think he’s an old man with no ideas. Auhl doesn’t mind, he intends to plough his own furrow and prove he’s not lost his touch.
His first case is the discovery of a skeleton under a concrete slab outside a house, which looks like murder; then there is a handsome doctor whose first two wives both died suddenly, and there are fears for the third wife – could he be a killer?
Add a friend who is in danger of losing custody of her daughter to her ex-husband, and Auhl has more than enough on his hands. Disher’s sublime touch for atmosphere and tension permeate this absorbing, emotional story.