The big guns

Crimefile It's a scatter of big guns this time out, with one of them even being able to write from beyond the grave.

CrimefileIt's a scatter of big guns this time out, with one of them even being able to write from beyond the grave.

But it's Elmore Leonard who leads the pack - he is on top form in The Hot Kid, managing to introduce something new into his well-tried formula. This is to set his scene back in the 1930s, in Bonnie and Clyde country, with screeching cars, gun molls, speakeasies, bank robbers, Tommy guns and Prohibition. The good guy is Deputy US Marshall Carl Webster and he's hot on the trail of Jack Belmont, the no-good son of an oil millionaire who has set out to make himself Public Enemy Number One. Also in the cast is True Detective writer Tony Antonelli, who is following the story and penning it for his avid readers. The book has all the usual Leonard features: smartass dialogue, well-drawn characters, a smooth villain, and a great story.

Next, to PD James and more civilised mayhem, with the poetry-loving Commander Adam Dalgliesh featuring in The Lighthouse. Combe Island, off the Cornish coast, is the place where stressed-out men and women in positions of high authority go to chill out. But the peace is rudely interrupted when best-selling author Nathan Oliver is found hanging from a high tower. Dalgliesh and his team are called in, but their investigation is constrained by the need to keep things quiet and under wraps. There's a likely cast of suspects, and the story is nicely padded out by the peeks we get into people's backgrounds, both the police and the other inhabitants of the island. No need to say more, for the author's name on the cover will sell the books in their thousands.

Such is also the case with Ruth Rendell. The good news is that End in Tears is a Chief Inspector Wexford mystery. Yes, the stolid inspector is back, aided by his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, and with two new members added to his team. The story is kicked off by a lump of concrete being deliberately dropped from a bridge on to a speeding car. However, the wrong person is killed, for it was the driver of the following car who was the intended victim. But she soon also turns up dead, the only daughter of a grieving father. Wexford is under pressure to solve the case, and another murder that takes place, as the local press has been publishing a series of articles criticising old-fashioned police methods. But in spite of all, good old Wexford gets to the bottom of the mystery in his own bumbling way, showing the new kids on the block how a murder is solved.

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A Lincoln lawyer is a defence attorney who has his office in the back of a Lincoln Town Car, speeding from one jurisdiction to another in search of cases in The Lincoln Lawyer, the latest offering from Michael Connelly. And these cases are usually the lowest of the low, the ones more reputable lawyers wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. Mickey Haller has been a Lincoln lawyer for quite a while, and he knows the system well. He manages to get by, always on the look-out for that one big case that will bring him into prominence and maybe shove him up the food chain. He thinks he has it when a wealthy Beverly Hills playboy is arrested for brutally beating a woman and Haller takes on the case. But things soon begin to fall apart when both the suspect and the victim turn out to be not quite whom they seem. Mickey is in up to his ears, and it takes all his native cunning and expertise to get him out of the soup that he's in. Another tour de force from Connelly.

Ed McBain died earlier this year, but he's been so prolific over the years that there's probably a store of his novels secreted away somewhere, to be brought out from time to time by his publishers. This one, Fiddlers, is an 87th Precinct novel, and it features the usual cast of characters, with Steve Carella and Bert Kling mostly to the fore. A serial killer is knocking off people, dispatching them with two bullets to the face. The same gun is used in all five cases, but there seems to be no connection between the victims. The police of the 87th Precinct, in their methodical way, sniff it out. McBain's strength in all these novels is the police procedure, how they talk, act and behave, and there's no lessening of this power in the present volume.

Finally we have The Vienna Assignment, Olen Steinhauer's fine novel of murder and espionage set in 1960s Vienna. This author writes very much in the mode of Alan Furst, the nonpareil of espionage writers. The protagonist is Brano Sev (I can't call him a hero), a major in the Ministry of State Security in an unnamed Eastern European country. The plot is too complicated to go into, but Sev, like all of these fictional intelligence agents, is an expert at survival. He is also a cold-hearted assassin, who kills not alone people, but also any chance of love in his life. Highly recommended.

Vincent Banville is an author and critic

The Hot Kid By Elmore Leonard Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99 The Lighthouse By PD James Faber & Faber, £17.99 End in Tears By Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, £17.99 The Lincoln Lawyer By Michael Connelly Orion, £17.99 Fiddlers By Ed McBain Orion, £12.99 The Vienna Assignment By Olen Steinhauer HarperCollins, £18.99