The Gosling Girl

Jacqueline Roy
Simon & Schuster, £14.99, pp400

Michelle Cameron isn’t Michelle Cameron any more. The crime she was incarcerated for, committed when she was 10, was so heinous, so shocking, that her identity has been changed for her own safety. But as she puts it: “What’s the point of being safe if everything has been taken from you?” Michelle is trying to make a new life for herself as Samantha when an old friend of hers is murdered and her identity as the mixed-race murderer of a little white girl is leaked to the press, enraging the public. “She remembers the judge saying she’d shown no remorse. What’s remorse? she’d said, but no one had heard her. No one is hearing her now.”

The Gosling Girl is one of the saddest, most moving thrillers I’ve read for some time. There is, it turns out, someone on Michelle’s side, black detective constable Natalie Tyler. Assigned to Michelle’s case and protection, she finds herself drawn to this desperately lonely girl and starts to ask questions about the past. Why did Michelle do it, and why was she the only one prosecuted, when there was someone else there too? Roy powerfully explores the repercussions of a childhood crime, exposing the racism that put Michelle in prison and which is still dogging Tyler today, forcing her into situations where she has to listen to people tell her: “I expect you think she got some kind of raw deal because she was black, that the trial was racist or some such thing. I know how you all stick together.”

The Tally Stick

Carl Nixon
World Editions, £12.99, pp288

The Tally Stick starts with a genuine cliffhanger: John Chamberlain is driving his sleeping family – four children and his wife – along a wet road on New Zealand’s south island. It’s the middle of the night in April 1978 and the English family are exploring their new home before John starts his new job. Then their car skids off the road and ends up in a river, leaving the parents dead and the badly injured children at the mercy of the elements.

They are not found until more than 30 years later, when the remains of eldest son, Maurice, are discovered, showing he had lived for four years after the family disappeared. A tally stick – a piece of scored wood – is found beside him. Nixon tells of what happened to the children after the crash – how they survived in this remote corner of the world and who found them. An atmospheric thriller, this is the Kiwi version of outback noir and I couldn’t put it down.

All Was Lost

Steven Maxwell
Pushkin Vertigo, £8.99, pp208

Orla McCabe has no money and a small baby. When she finds a case of money at a crime scene in the middle of the northern moors, she takes it, oblivious to the world of hurt that lies ahead but desperate to escape her current situation. She flees, along with her husband and baby daughter, followed by a terrifying and depraved crew of hitmen, with detectives Lynch and Carlin not far behind. The pair, men with troubles of their own, are investigating a human trafficking deal that went wrong.

All Was Lost is an exploration of what happens when a mother is pushed to the limits and how easily an ordinary person can turn to crime. “She’d been humiliated before and she’d been pushed… now with a gun and a purpose, she saw no reason not to push back. She was surprised by the sudden tempering of her spine.” Fast paced and shocking.

The Couple at the Table

Sophie Hannah
Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99, pp368

I’ve followed the adventures of Sophie Hannah’s perennially gloomy pair of detectives, Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer, from the start. In The Couple at the Table, they’re trying to get away from it all at a luxury, couples-only resort when they find themselves – surprise, surprise – investigating a murder. Jane, one of the guests, has received an anonymous note, warning her to “beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours”. But the alert is nonsense: of the five other couples present, no one’s table is closer or further away. Later that night, Jane, who, it turns out, is a nasty piece of work, is murdered. Despite the closed-room nature of the killing – no one has entered or left the resort and everyone has an alibi – months later the murderer still hasn’t been found. Simon, obviously, isn’t giving up, but it’s affecting the rest of his work. “You’re making this one failure – rare for you – last an unseasonably long time,” his awful boss, Proust, tells him. “Dipping into it over and over again, every day, like a slice of stale toast endlessly probing a rotten egg yolk.”

But Simon presses on doggedly, as does Lucy, the woman whose husband left her for Jane, who just happened to be holidaying in the same resort. As much head-scratching fun as ever.

• To order The Gosling Girl, The Tally Stick, All Was Lost and The Couple at the Table click on the titles or go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply