Nineteen Eighty-Three, by David Peace (Serpent's Tail, £12)
The breathless, bare-knuckle ride of the Red Riding Quartet comes to a shuddering halt in this final instalment of the Yorkshire ultra-noir crime series. From the slightly undigested influence of James Ellroy in the opening salvo of Nineteen Seventy Four onwards, this merciless dissection of the horror of the 70s and 80s has acquired a gritty patina of controlled rage over the years and will undoubtedly stand as a major achievement in British dark fiction. Set in the aftermath of the Yorkshire Ripper, this closing volume revisits the concentric circles of police and local institutionalised corruption, drawing into its whirlpool a solicitor, a CID officer and a rent boy who made his first appearance earlier in the series. The pace is relentless, the violence gut-wrenching, the style staccato-plus and the morality bleak and forlorn, but Peace's voice is powerful and unique. This is compelling stuff that will leave no one indifferent.
Sanctum, by Denise Mina (Bantam, £12.99)
A stand-alone crime novel for Denise Mina, following the often despairing Garnet Hill trilogy. A respected Glasgow psychiatrist is convicted of murdering a notorious serial killer who was entrusted to her care. Her distraught husband, convinced of her innocence, revisits the case by laboriously sorting through her papers, newspaper cuttings and computer records of the initial case. As we follow his efforts, we discover the depth of the ambiguous relationship that bound doctor and patient, and the treacherous currents of underlying attraction that swirled around the seductive murderer and the women in his life. Why do some women find criminals irresistible, even marrying murderers while they are in prison? Was his wife's fascination with her patient love? Examining the shifting sands that separate fact and fiction, perception and reality, Mina draws a masterly psychological web of people on the edge and the devils that lie beneath their apparent respectability. Engrossing.
A Presumption of Death, by Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L Sayers (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
In 1998, Jill Paton Walsh ably completed Dorothy L Sayers's last unfinished novel, Thrones, Dominations. This time, taking her cue from a series of letters from members of the Wimsey family published by Sayers in the Spectator in 1939 and 1940, she has conjured up how the second world war might have changed the lives of Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane and their acolytes. War has broken out and Harriet, now Lady Wimsey, has taken her children to the country while Peter is, inevitably, on intelligence duties overseas. When a dead body is found at the end of the village's first air-raid practice, the sleuthing is on and the hardy couple are reunited for the sake of the game. There are jolly country vicars, debonair RAF pilots, randy land girls, snobbery with violence - all the obligatory ingredients - as Paton Walsh lovingly recreates the charms of old-time amateur detective work.
The Ambitious Stepmother, by Fidelis Morgan (HarperCollins, £12.99)
A third irrepressible outing for the ebullient Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her awesomely bosomed maid, Alpiew, a pair of Restoration detectives dubbed "Cagney and Lacey in corsets", although I'd add a strong dash of Laurel and Hardy to the mix. When the second Mrs Alderman Franklyn-Green recruits the bawdy countess to find a suitable husband for her shrew of a stepdaughter, the jolly gang are off to France and Versailles where, naturally, all havoc is soon set loose among the gambling, gay balls and treachery of the exiled English court. And the food is no great shakes either, as a guest is soon found poisoned. Plots within plots, culinary eccentricities, the Bastille's most mysterious prisoner and the discovery of Lord Whippingham's favourite depravity, involving women with strong teeth, pepper the uproarious progress of our two unconventional heroines. Fun never came so lusty.
· Maxim Jakubowski's most recent book is Kiss Me Sadly (The Do-Not Press)
