Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, £22)
The sixth Jackson Brodie book finds the PI firmly in Agatha Christie – even Cluedo – territory, as Brodie is tasked by a pair of siblings with investigating the possible theft of one of their recently deceased mother’s paintings. After some reluctant assistance from DC Reggie Chase, he begins to suspect that the theft may be linked to the disappearance of a Turner from Burton Makepeace, a nearby stately home. The owners, in an attempt to make their crumbling pile financially viable, have converted part of it into a hotel. When Jackson and Chase arrive, they are hosting a murder mystery weekend with a group of fractious thespians delivering well-worn lines in front of a captive audience – literally, because a snowstorm soon cuts off all means of escape and lines of communication. Sharp, droll and knowing as ever, Atkinson has huge fun with the set-up; the supporting cast is terrific, and the rueful Brodie, ever more mindful of the passing years, feels like an old friend.
Guilty By Definition by Susie Dent (Zaffre, £16.99)
Set in Oxford, in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary, lexicographer Dent’s debut novel, which makes splendidly atmospheric use of the city of dreaming spires, is about the hidden lives of words as well as people. It begins with the first in a series of bafflingly cryptic anonymous letters challenging senior editor Martha Thornhill and her colleagues to solve a murder. The references are to the disappearance of Martha’s elder sister Charlie, who vanished more than a decade earlier, when Martha was still at school. As the editors work through the fiendishly difficult clues, their investigation reveals that not only did golden girl Charlie have a dark side, but that she may have been keeping an astounding secret. Guilty By Definition may not be the most emotionally engaging novel you’ll read this year, but this astonishingly clever literary mystery will be catnip to logophiles and cruciverbalists alike.
Sanctuary by Garry Disher (Viper, £9.99)
Veteran Australian crime writer Disher’s latest standalone centres on accomplished thief Grace who, brought up in foster homes – “in care” but without care – is well used to watching her back. On the run from Adam, a former partner-in-crime, she fetches up in a small town in the Adelaide Hills, where she takes a job in Erin Mandel’s antiques shop. The women form a friendship, and a more peaceful life beckons, but the past is always threatening to catch up … Sanctuary is told from several points of view, including that of Adam, now working off a debt to an appallingly unscrupulous PI, and toxic Brodie Hendren, who is determined to track down and punish the wife who escaped him, and it takes some time for all the plot strands to come together. However, Disher keeps the various narrative plates spinning with the dexterity of a master storyteller for an engrossing tale of characters who range from morally ambiguous to wholly indefensible.
The Examiner by Janice Hallett (Viper, £18.99)
Like her previous books, Hallett’s fifth novel presents the reader with a dossier of evidence. This time, it begins with a message from an examiner who believes that “something awful may have happened” on the multimedia art MA course at Royal Hastings University. Emails, essays and downloads from message groups follow, as we are introduced to six students ranging in skill and experience, from established artist Alyson to Cameron, a stressed executive in search of work-life balance. Small seeds of distrust are soon sown within the group, and it gradually becomes clear that, in several cases, the participants’ real reasons for being on the course are not the ones they claim in their personal statements. The cracks really begin to show when they team up to create an elaborate installation for their final assignment, at which point the plot twists form a tottering pile as the tone grows ever darker. Close reading is essential but rewarding for this complicated and unconventional slow burn of a book.
Sounds Like a Plan by Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith (Atria, £9.99)
The first in a projected series from two award-winning American authors, Sounds Like a Plan features young Black Los Angeles PIs Mackenzie Cunningham and Jackson Jones, who meet when they discover that they have been hired by the same person. Dodgy lawyer Raymond Patterson wants them to find Ashley Cross, the missing 24-year-old daughter of one of his clients. The case seems fairly straightforward, but the truth, as they discover when a third PI is found dead along with their quarry, is considerably more complicated, as well as a lot more dangerous. This initial outing is a pacey read, told in alternating points of view, with the attraction-of-opposites romantic suspense – Mackenzie comes from privilege, while ex-cop Jackson was raised by a working-class single mother – and plenty of action making up for some fairly clunky dialogue and characters that verge on the stereotypical.