The last couple of novels featuring the morose Swedish policeman Kurt Wallender showed signs of tiredness. Henning Mankell, the author, was no longer as interested in his character, it seemed, as in their early years together. In Before the Frost (Harvill, £14.99; offer £11.99), Mankell virtually admits the charge. The book is being promoted as a “Linda Wallender mystery”, the first of a “gripping new series”. Linda, as Mankell’s readers will know, is Kurt’s somewhat difficult daughter from his former marriage. She has now unexpectedly decided to become a policewoman in the Ystad force, from which her father is soon to retire. She also inherits her father’s limelight spot in the Mankell novels.

In Before the Frost, Daddy Kurt is still very much in charge of the investigation. Linda has only just qualified as a cop. But her childhood friend’s disappearance, amid evidence of a strange and vicious religious cult becoming active in the region, allows her to gatecrash the investigations and become part of the action, not least as a potential victim of crazed killers. The father-daughter tensions are well explored, and the book teems with weird atmosphere. But will Linda prove interesting enough to take over her father’s huge international following? I doubt it.

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano spends much of his time avoiding three things: letting a criminal investigation interfere with a good meal, marrying his lovely tempestuous Livia, and getting the promotion he’s long deserved — which would mean more responsibility and, worse, being transferred elsewhere. In The Snack Thief (Picador, £14.99; offer £11.99) the title refers to a child who robs schoolchildren of their morning eats, with violence. The discovery of a retired businessman stabbed to death in the lift of his apartment forces Montalbano to work hard, especially when he finds links with a Tunisian-Italian incident at sea, a whiff of terrorism and a mysterious prostitute who disappears leaving her son with the bewildered policeman. Stephen Sartarelli, the translator, does an excellent job of conveying Sicilian mood and robust dialect, and Montalbano grows more endearing with every book.

Carlo Lucarelli’s first novel to be translated into English, Almost Blue, was a frightening tale, verging on the surreal, of a blind man’s search for a killer through identifying his voice. It was rightly shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of the year, and set up unfairly high expectations of Lucarelli’s next.

Day After Day (Harvill, £9.99; offer £8.79) doesn’t quite match its predecessor, but does enough to want much more from the author, his translator Oonagh Stransky and his combative, down-to-earth policewoman, Inspector Grazia Negro. She’s now living with the blind guy from Almost Blue, hunting down a mass killer who calls himself Pit Bull. He kills to order — whose? — for no reasons other than money and satisfaction, and travels all over Italy to perform his work. The reader knows who he is from early on, but that doesn’t diminish the tensions and the atmosphere of fear that Lucarelli is so adept at creating.

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