Chilling Crime to read this January: Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons, The
Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons (Century £20, 400pp)
It’s been almost six years since Parsons’s magnificently idiosyncratic detective DC Max Wolfe last made an appearance.
So it is a delight to welcome him back – especially now that he’s been promoted to DS.
Here, he clashes with Emma Moon, who served 16 years for her part in an armed robbery that left two men dead.
Then a young PC, it was Wolfe who actually put the handcuffs on. Now, she is out of prison and intent on revenge on everyone – including Wolfe, with whom she pleaded to be let go because of her troubled son, who went on to kill himself.
As with all Parsons’s finest work, this is also a book about parenthood, as Wolfe has a 12-year-old daughter, Scout. This is Parsons at his scintillating best: do not miss it.
Jailed for 16 years, now she wans revenge
The Bookseller by Tim Sullivan (Head of Zeus £20, 368pp)
When he is called to investigate the murder of a bookseller in his local Bristol bookshop, Cross is less than focused on the case.
His father has just announced that he is dying of cancer and the detective is none too clear on how he should react.
His lack of empathy is one of the distinguishing features of his autism. But he conquers his confusion and begins to realise that the world of rare books can bring large profits for the right manuscript, which is a motive for murder.
However, the killer could be an expert on detective novels, and therefore have an idea of how to commit the perfect crime. Packed with detail, and Cross’s ability to sense a lie, it is a delight.
A Voice in the Night by Simon Mason (Riverrun £16.99, 368pp)
The detective double-act of Wilkins and Wilkins, DI Ray (posh and serious) and DI Ryan (working class and rebellious) returns for their fourth case together – once again set in Oxford.
But this time they have to cope with a new boss, DCS Rebecca Wainwright, who is wary of them both.
She assigns them a case involving the disappearance of an aged academic, who finally turns up dead in his pyjamas on the lawn of a local hotel.
At the same time there is the murder of a security guard at the Institute of Egyptology, and there is a spate of shoplifting at the Co-op where Ryan’s sister works.
Can the Wilkins’s triumph against the odds?