KEY POINTS:
Nina Todd has gone by Lesley Glaister (Bloomsbury $35)
At a conference to build self-esteem at a London hotel, a woman called Nina Todd meets a man and goes to bed with him. She regrets this almost immediately - she only recently married a nice man. The man from the hotel starts stalking her, and her life begins to fall apart. Her husband's mad brother kills himself while she's supposed to be keeping an eye on him. Her husband decides to take a job on a remote island for some months, alone. Her mother-in-law seems to hate her. She's in danger of losing her job. And Rupert, the mysterious man from the hotel, won't go away. A creepy, creeping psychological thriller, deftly done.
Nightlife by Thomas Perry (Quercus $22.95)
Tanya Starling, if that is her real name, is not a good girl. She looks lovely, she'll make you feel like the only man in the world. But if you are a man, the last thing you should do is let her into your life because it will be the last thing you'll ever do. Nobody in Nightlife is blameless. The men are predatory and, mostly, stupid. Which is what Tanya counts on. She hasn't counted on the laconic loner, private eye Joe Pitt, who is determined to find her, and find out who she really is. As is Catherine Hobbes, a copper who becomes involved with Pitt. Nightlife is a smart, tough book, a read as cool and laconic as its PI character.
The Return By Hakan Nesser (Macmillan $32)
Another nutty cast of Swedish coppers, here led by Inspector Van Veeteren whose detecting seems to consist of muttering his way through the plot - by the end of which he has, mysteriously, solved the thing. He is, he thinks lazily, about to die anyway, of cancer of the large intestine. He contemplates, with equal lethargy, the case of a corpse without head or limbs, and his own forthcoming bit of butchery which will cut four inches off his intestine. His team all seem to have bits of their brains missing, too, more interested in their love lives than the case of the butchered corpse. A meandering example of cop fiction that is a delight.
The Riverman by Alex Gray (Sphere $36.99)
The Riverman is the bloke who navigates the Clyde, pulling out the dead, rescuing those who have tried to kill themselves. One day the Riverman pulls the body of a businessman from the water. This looks like the death of another drunk, but the man is a reformed alkie who hasn't had a drink in years. The really murky secrets are buried deep within his top-level accountancy firm: almost everyone who works there has something to hide. An above-average cop procedural that gets a bit swamped in the intrigue, and there is a limit to how exciting a top-level accountancy firm can be. However, a good solid read.
An Accidental American by Alex Carr (Orion $36.99)
Nicole used to be a top forger. Then she did six years in a French prison which cured her of a life of thrills, she hoped. She holes up in a farmhouse and enjoys the simple life, with a bit of passport forgery on the side to bring in some money. But forgers, like spies, never get to retire and when a menacing man from the US Government threatens her idyllic but illegal life in France she has no choice but to do as she's told - find out whether her former lover, Rahim Ali, has become a terrorist. It's a reasonable set-up for a pretty good spy novel which is a fictionalised account of the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut.
