Never Go Back
by Robert Goddard
Bantam, £12.99; 352pp

Borkmann’s Point
by Häkan Nesser
Macmillan, £16.99; 256pp

MARK BILLINGHAM AND his complex copper Detective Inspector Tom Thorne get better and better. In Buried, his excesses now forgiven, Thorne is back on the murder squad, but he is diverted to the Met’s kidnap unit to look into the disappearance of a 16-year-old schoolboy.

What makes the case more sensitive than usual is that Luke is the son of the recently retired Detective Chief Inspector Tony Mullen, known to many in the force. Why did Mullen and his wife wait so long before reporting Luke’s absence, and why has there been no ransom demand? What intrigues Thorne most is that when asked to list criminals he has arrested who might desire revenge, Mullen omits the most obvious name, a convicted paedophile suspected of murder.

The reader is soon told (although Thorne is not) that Luke has been taken, but the motives of the kidnappers remain grimly unclear. A few gruesome deaths ensue, but the boy’s whereabouts are still unknown.

The troubled Thorne, burdened with guilt over the death of his father, asks tough questions impolitely, follows his inspired hunches and eventually extracts the shocking truth. Gripping stuff. But Thorne seems a little mellower these days, and there is even a hint of romance with a colleague on the kidnap unit. I hope he does not turn all soft. That would be a betrayal of the most interesting cop in British crime fiction at present.

Robert Goddard rarely disappoints. For 20 years he has been writing thrillers and crime novels of consistently high quality, without quite becoming a household name. He prizes the traditional virtues of meticulous plotting, well-drawn characters and an immaculate sense of pace.

In Never Go Back, his occasional hero Harry Barnett reluctantly joins a reunion of men who took part in an RAF psychological programme during the 1950s. On the way to the Scottish castle where they had originally gathered, one of their number apparently kills himself. Other unexplained deaths follow.

Barnett concludes that the explanations are to be found in events half a century ago, and Goddard provides a satisfying number of twists and shocks along the way.

Another good Swedish writer emerges, an old hand, garlanded with his country’s prizes, but only now translated into English (although, very irritatingly, this version has American spellings, especially of the frequently occurring word ax. It would not have cost much to prepare an English edition). Håkan Nesser’s Borkmann’s Point was originally published in 1994, and has a slightly dated feel about it, but the plot is sound and fast-moving, there is a tense climax, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren of the Dutch police is an amiably dour investigator.

In the small port of Kaalbringen, a serial killer is at large, nearly severing the heads of his three victims with an axe. There seems to be no link between them. Then one of the police squad disappears.

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