Guardian Review
Norwegian author Karin Fossum is always commendably ready to show that crime - however diverting in fiction - has grim consequences in the real world. The Whisperer (Harvill Secker, £12.99, translated by Kari Dickson) sees her long-serving copper Konrad Sejer return, in a novel that works backwards, opening with the catastrophe that has ruined the life of supermarket worker Ragna Riegel. Ragna has chosen a quiet, ordered existence; her only son lives in another city, Berlin. But when she receives a letter that reads "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE," she finds she must protect herself against a murderous enemy. It's exemplary stuff, with the dismantling of the constrained heroine's life brilliantly drawn. And despite the inverted trajectory of the novel, the suspense is maintained with a sure touch. There are two leading strands to the thriller genre: the globetrotting blockbuster in which paper-thin characters crack a ridiculously complicated code, and the intelligent novel with psychology foregrounded. American writer Dan Fesperman is firmly in the latter camp, but can also raise readers' pulses. In Safe Houses (Head of Zeus, £18.99), CIA employee Helen Abell has been murdered in Maryland along with her husband. Helen's daughter Anna, rejecting the notion that her mentally ill brother was responsible, commissions investigator Henry Mattick to find out the truth. She is shocked to discover that her mother was a spy in Europe, and Fesperman's ambitious time-split narrative - moving between Maryland in 2014 and west Berlin in 1979 - allows the author to explore the very different attitudes of the two periods, not least the endemic sexism of Helen's era of espionage. The duplicity of the secret world becomes a metaphor for wider human betrayal. US writer Tami Hoag's The Boy (Trapeze, £20), while not perhaps her best work, reminds us that in capable hands the field still has myriad possibilities. In the Louisiana town of Bayou Breaux, Detective Nick Fourcade walks into the most gruesome crime scene he has ever encountered. Genevieve Gauthier's seven-year-old son has been brutally killed by an intruder. But why has Genevieve been left alive? There is no forced entry, and no apparent motive. And when the dead boy's babysitter goes missing, the nervous townsfolk grow convinced that a madman is on the loose, while there are as many suspects among Genevieve's lovers as among the region's criminal community. As Fourcade and his wife, Annie Broussard, also a detective, uncover a variety of secrets, Bayou Breaux becomes ever more dangerous. Hoag's subject, as ever, is emotional trauma - though the tone is marginally less dark than in her earlier work. Husband-and-wife detective teams stretch back as far as Dashiell Hammett, but Hoag ensures that her pair have a very individual quality, encapsulated in their razor-sharp dialogue. If the English winter has you hankering for sultrier climes, try Murder in the Caribbean by Robert Thorogood (HQ, £8.99). Thorogood is the creator of Death in Paradise, the TV show that combines sunny escapism with relatively unchallenging crime scenarios, and that format is replicated in his novels to beguiling effect. DI Richard Poole is in a spot many would envy, the idyllic tropical island of St Marie, but he harbours a wistfulness for such English pleasures as a good cup of tea. When an explosion destroys a boat in the bay, Poole realises the only clue to tracking down a ruthless murderer is a ruby found at the crime scene. When so much modern crime fare is excruciatingly bleak, there is a place for more comforting fare. In Anthony J Quinn's The Listeners (Head of Zeus, £18.99), Carla Herron has swept through fast-track training at Edinburgh's police college, and is immediately plunged into a disturbing case in the Scottish Borders. At the Deepwell psychiatric hospital, a patient has confessed to murdering one of the institution's psychotherapists. But there is no body, and the supposed murderer is under round-the-clock surveillance in a secure ward. Carla finds herself on two journeys, one geographical and one into the darkest reaches of human psychopathology. As in earlier books, Quinn sets up a Russian doll narrative, with manipulation within manipulation. The domestic noir genre is increasingly crowded, but Rebecca Griffiths's A Place to Lie (Sphere, £19.99) adroitly combines an increasingly tense narrative with stylish writing that keeps her a cut above most of her rivals. In 1990, Caroline and Joanna are staying with their great aunt Dora near the Forest of Dean, but the bucolic idyll is brought to an abrupt end with a death in a dark wood. Years pass, and a violent assault sends Joanna back to her aunt's crumbling cottage for a final confrontation with the various people who may have blighted her existence. While there is nothing radically new in the plotting, Griffiths has a comprehensive grip on the reader's attention. Barry Forshaw's latest book, Historical Noir, is published by Pocket Essentials/No Exit. - Barry Forshaw.