So far, Denise Mina has worked in threes. First came her Garnethill trilogy, starring Maureen O’Donnell and her dysfunctional family, exposing the innards of Glasgow’s working class, good and bad. Then came the Patricia “Paddy” Meehan triptych, the lighter, funnier but still socially authentic and edgy tales of a young Glasgow journalist. After the two unusual sleuths, Still Midnight (Orion, £12.99; Buy this book) introduces Mina’s third heroine, who seems comparatively straightforward, a Glasgow copper.

Detective Sergeant Alex Morrow is just as beguiling as O’Donnell and Meehan, which doesn’t mean she’s pleasant or nice. She’s difficult, impulsive, rude, and feels, correctly, that women are not treated equally in the police force. In Still Midnight, her superior removes her from being in charge of the case because of her alleged lack of sensitivity in dealing with Asians. Two armed white men had burst into the home of a Pakistani family, demanding £2 million. Disbelieving protestations that they had got the wrong address, they seize an old man as hostage and leave. The police, with Morrow on the case but subordinate, inquire into the family. Mina’s characterisation is superb. Alex Morrow deserves her own trilogy. At least.

In John Connolly’s The Lovers, (Hodder & Stoughton £17.99; Buy this book), Charlie Parker, he of the murdered wife and daughter, and the penchant for violent avenging of wrongs, has been stripped of his private eye licence and is working in a bar. He turns to solving a mystery about his family. His policeman father had shot dead two unarmed teenagers, providing a lame reason for doing so; a day later he killed himself. Parker seeks to know why he committed those two deadly acts; his inquiries about his father reveal more than he bargained for about his own past. This is a more restrained and reflective Parker than we’re accustomed to, but no less powerful a character.

In Londongrad (Atlantic, £12.99; Buy this book), Reggie Nadelson’s regular hero, the attractively moody Moscow-born New York cop Artie Cohen, continues to ply his wisdom and policing skills among the growing Russian community in the city. This time the murder of a Russian good-time girl leads to the killing of someone close to Artie. Distraught, his emotional rampage to find the killer leads him into deep Russian conspiracies, and the re-emergence of plutonium 210, the substance used in real life on Alexander Litvinenko. Artie’s search takes him to London and Moscow and into more trouble.

Nadelson writes and plots with panache, and she portrays the Russian diaspora in the US, funny and sad, with conviction.

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