This makes the even dozen novels featuring Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux, and, one might say, is more of the same. But Burke is such a fine writer and evokes the fetid swamps and bayous, brilliant rain-and-sun-drenched landscapes of his native place so well that one is captivated, in spite of a certain déjà vu feel to the plot. Again the cause of present mayhem lies in the murk of the past, with the wealthy LaSalle family finally having to pay for sins committed by their ancestors.
The murder and rape of one Amanda Boudreau, and the consequent arrest of Tee Bobby Hulin kick off the storyline. When Robicheaux hears that Tee Bobby is to be represented by lawyer Perry LaSalle, he realises that the manis motivated by guilt, for LaSalle's grandfather had taken Tee Bobby's slave grandmother as his mistress. It is always difficult in a short review to give more than a hint of the denseness and atmosphere of a Lee Burke novel, for layer is piled upon layer in a weave of plot and subplot, with perfectly observed characters coming and going with insidious intent. Suffice to say that this one sees our author at his sinister best, stirring the pot gleefully and throwing in ever more juicy components to keep it bubbling malevolently.
Sometimes it is a good idea to gather up a best-selling author's short stories and publish them in one volume, and sometimes it is not. In the case of Ian Rankin, there is a certain amount of dross, but the good stuff far outweighs the bad.
Some of the tales feature Inspector Rebus, but quite a few of them do not. In his introduction, Rankin tells us that he writes short stories in between the novels, a lot of the time to get away from his troubled and stubborn protagonist. As our author is a true professional, the entertainment value is high, with most of the pieces cut to the bone, a necessity in this type of offering. 'A Deep Hole' is a gem, with its enigmatic anti-hero, Sam the Spade, telling of his encounter with Dainty the moneylender, who, like an inefficient doctor, likes to bury his mistakes. Some of the stories delve deeper into the criminal psyche than the usual blood and thunder effort: 'Herbert in Motion' is a case in point, its shady protagonist a Senior Curator in the Tate Gallery, and the thrust of the piece bent more towards the philosophical than the murderous.
All in all, then, a most readable collection, finishing off with, believe it or not, an Inspector Rebus story for Christmas.
Glenn Meade, who was born in Finglas, Dublin, has already written three well-regarded international thrillers. He began this present one in the summer of 1999, writing about an al-Qaeda terrorist cell threatening to decimate Washington with a new secret weapon, and had finished a first draft just 11 days before the happenings of September 11th, 2001.
The similarities between his fictional tale and the actual devastation of the Twin Towers are frightening, even more so since the author maintains that in his research he found the secret service firms in the States to be vast bureaucratic organisations that "sometimes behaved like a headless chicken". In the book, the Americans and the Russians are threatened, so they both put their best men on the job of finding the baddies. The American is Jack Collins, an FBI counter-terrorist expert, while the Russian is Alexei Kursk, one of his country's top agents. The story is told in a taut, red herring-littered, documentary style, and would make a marvellous television mini-series.
It is a big book - over 700 pages - and the only criticism I have of it is that holding it gave me tendonitis. Otherwise, it's a cracker!
In much the same vein as the Meade book, Clancy gives us yet another in a long line of international thrillers. This time he goes back into the past to find young Jack Ryan living in London and getting ready to debrief a high-level Soviet defector. Jack, ex-Marine, teacher and historian had come to the attention of the CIA's deputy director after he survived a series of deadly encounters with an IRA splinter group - come on, you must remember them. And more incredibly, the defector tells our Jack that top Soviet leaders are planning to assassinate Pope John Paul II and thus destabilise the whole Western world.
I know that Clancy's books are very popular, but I find reading them as pain-inducing as having teeth pulled. His legion of researchers works overtime for him, and every new fact is inserted whether it has a bearing on the plot or not. The result is a series of huge, turgid chunks of reading matter that to me are as indigestible as mustard-covered American hot dogs. And again, holding the book, over 600 pages, gave me muscle contractions.
One of the joys of reviewing crime fiction is that now and then one comes across a new author whose writing sets the pulse racing and the jaded responses tingling. I haven't met Lawton before, even though this present novel is his sixth, but, having read it, I'm now off in search of the other five.
His protagonist here is Turner Raines, one of the worst private eyes in New York, and he'll tell you that himself. Set in the summer of 1969 - hot and sweaty, with a man about to land on the moon and the Vietnam war setting father against son and ripping the nation to pieces - the book follows Turner's lonely odyssey as he chases a draft dodger called Joey D all the way to Toronto and back. On his return to the city he finds that his oldest friend is dead, Norman Mailer is running for Mayor and ghosts from his past are coming back to haunt him. The story is told in the first person, and our hero's self-deprecating style is wonderfully apt as he stumbles resolutely on in search of some form of renewal in his life and in his chosen profession. I entreat you, dear reader, to search out John Lawton and cherish him to your bosom, for he is truly an original.
And if I could just finish by mentioning a new series of Crime Paperback Masterworks being published by Orion: the three I've come across are Jim Thompson's noir masterpiece The Killer Inside Me, Geoffrey Household's stiff upper lip British thriller Rogue Male and Tony Hillerman's Navajo reservation set Dance Hall of the Dead, all priced at £6.99 sterling. Great reading, and there are many more classics from the past planned.
• Michael Painter is a writer and critic
Jolie Blon's Bounce. By James Lee Burke. Orion, £12. 99 sterling
Beggars Banquet. By Ian Rankin. Orion, £16.99 sterling
Resurrection Day. By Glenn Meade. Hodder & Stoughton, £10.99 sterling
Red Rabbit. By Tom Clancy. Michael Joseph/Penguin, £18.99 sterling
Sweet Sunday. By John Lawton. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99 sterling