Chilling Crime fiction to have on your shelf as Autumn draws closer: A Drowning Tide by

A DROWNING TIDE by Sarah Lawton (Black & White £16.99, 320pp)

THIS charming crime debut set on the Isle of Wight focuses on the reclusive middle-aged spinster Ms Merriweather –Merry to her friends – who lives alone composing cryptic crosswords and going wild swimming from the beach in her wetsuit.

But then her neighbour, Lucas Manning, son of her late best friend, mysteriously disappears and she finds herself, unwittingly, drawn into the police search for him. 

Enter former policeman-turned-private investigator Gareth Jones, who is also looking for Lucas for his employers. The pair form an unlikely partnership, which brings Merry out of her shell to help solve the cryptic puzzle of the disappearance.

Written with panache, it announces the arrival of a duo that might just come to rival the Thursday Murder Club.

MIDNIGHT AND BLUE by Ian Rankin (Orion £25, 352pp)

THE publication of this 25th story featuring the irascible, rule-breaking former detective inspector John Rebus – something to be celebrated – sees Rankin’s unforgettable creation in prison for life for killing his notorious gangster foe Morris ‘Big Ger’ McCafferty. 

His lawyers have gone silent, and Rebus is left to suffer. But then a prisoner is killed in his cell and Rebus finds himself unwittingly involved in investigating what is an old-fashioned locked room mystery – set in a high security prison.

Rebus struggles to unravel what happened, sometimes invoking the shadow of Sherlock Holmes as he does so, while doing everything he can to prevent being killed by another inmate who has it in for him. 

It proves that Rebus is one of the most remarkable characters in crime fiction.

THE DROWNED by John Banville (Faber £18.99, 352pp)

SET in a shadowy, sinister rural Ireland in the 1950s, this fourth story featuring Detective Inspector Strafford and his friend, grumpy pathologist Quirke, once again reveals the melancholy that surrounds

Banville’s superbly drawn characters. Hiding in the depths of the countryside, a mysterious man comes across an abandoned car in a field with its engine running.

Suddenly, a figure appears waving his arms and shouting that his wife has thrown herself into the sea just yards away.

Strafford is despatched to investigate and discovers that nothing is what it seems. 

Has the woman committed suicide or has she been murdered? Is she even dead? 

Banville’s sumptuous prose unveils a haunting web of human deceit that is both compelling and utterly beautiful.