Genre round-up — the best of new crime fiction

The film industry has the Oscars; the world of crime fiction has the Crime Writers’ Association Daggers — and the imprimatur of the latter can produce quite as much of a sales fillip as those gold statuettes. At this year’s awards dinner (which I have been MC-ing for years), those carrying home the big baubles included MW Craven for The Puppet Show and Dov Alfon for A Long Night in Paris , and the evening was a reminder of what a vintage year it has been for the genre. How many of the following will be up for next year’s awards?

After several successful stand­alones, the writing team who make up “Nicci French” — Nicci Gerrard and Sean French — inaugurated a new series with a recurring character, a psychotherapist called Frieda Klein. I was among the admirers who lamented this publishing imperative and were wistful for the days of a new protagonist for each new Nicci French novel — often a woman making catastrophic mistakes that plunge her life into chaos.

Well, we can rejoice — with The Lying Room (Simon & Schuster, RRP£14.99), Nicci French is back to what she does best: dispensing trenchant psychological suspense in a one-off format, in which the fate of the central character is up for grabs. Neve Connolly dresses in sexy underwear for an assignation with her lover. But on arriving at his flat, she finds him with his head staved in, a bloody hammer nearby. Instead of phoning the police (terrified of how revelation of her affair will hit her family), she cleans the death scene, removing not only traces of herself (she thinks) but of whoever committed the murder.

It’s an ill-advised action, but this is, after all, a Nicci French heroine. She is soon engulfed in a maelstrom of lies and betrayal. Neve is a wonderfully conflicted heroine with whom it’s easy to identify. Readers will find themselves manipulated in the most pleasurable of fashions.

In a world in which absolute values are increasingly amorphous, it’s comforting to be able to say that some things are just the very best. Such as the work of Michael Connelly, whose The Night Fire (Orion, RRP£20) is further proof of his undimmed creativity.

Old and new Connelly protagonists interact here: Detective Harry Bosch is drawn out of uneasy retirement into another teaming-up with Renée Ballard of the LAPD when a stolen “murder book” surfaces, detailing the death of an ex-con decades ago. Also reappearing is Connelly’s low-rent lawyer (and Bosch’s half-brother) Mickey Haller. All three are soon obliged to tread painfully on police toes before it is revealed why the murder book was stolen years before. Juggling a characteristically crowded storyline (halfway through the book, Bosch is coping with five investigative tracks), Connelly demonstrates once again why he is held in such esteem.

If you’re the UK’s foremost writer of classic ghost stories, why bother to venture into the overcrowded field of the police procedural? Thankfully, Susan Hill did just that with her novels featuring saturnine copper Simon Serrailler, of which The Benefit of Hindsight (Chatto & Windus, RRP£18.99) is the latest — and it’s quite a return to form after last year’s quotidian The Comforts of Home.

Serrailler, coping with the loss of his arm, has returned to police work at Lafferton CID. He finds solace in making drawings in the vaulted roof of the local cathedral, but when a gay couple are robbed by initially friendly young motorists, Serrailler deduces that there may be an organised crime strategy in play. A press blackout that he orders has unexpected consequences — a mistake that could have benefited from the titular benefit of hindsight. Readers of Hill/Serrailler will be used to the fact that she crams her narratives with a host of personal character detail — very much the case here.

American writer Rene Denfeld’s The Butterfly Girl (Weidenfeld, RRP£14.99) is a follow-up to the excellent The Child Finder , with thirtysomething private eye Naomi Cottle continuing to look for the sister she has not seen since they were both abducted as children. At the same time, Naomi is dealing with 12-year-old Celia (who has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather), and finds herself investigating the murder of street children. Denfeld expertly evokes the lives of the vulnerable in society.

Antti Tuomainen’s Little Siberia (Orenda, RRP£8.99, translated by David Hackston) is already a considerable success in the author’s native Finland. A priest called Joel is protecting a valuable meteorite while trying to come to terms with the pregnancy of his wife (the child may not be his); violence erupts. By no means Nordic noir of the familiar variety, this is eccentric, humorous fare, reminiscent of nothing so much as a Coen Brothers movie.

Finally, three expertly turned novels from three reliable talents. The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen (Bantam, RRP£20) has its troubled food writer heroine discovering that she is not alone in an isolated house on a hill; it’s a clever contemporary spin on the Gothic novel. And both Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths (Quercus, RRP£14.99) and Bryant and May: England’s Finest by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday, RRP£16.99) are infused with a rich and beguilingly eccentric Englishness, full of character and an idiosyncratic sense of place.

Barry Forshaw’s latest book is ‘Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide’

Join our online book group on Facebook at FTBooksCafe. Listen and subscribe to Culture Call, a transatlantic conversation from the FT, at ft.com/culture-call or on Apple Podcasts