Cold in Hand by John Harvey
William Heinemann, £12.99

JOHN HARVEY'S admirable Nottingham copper Charlie Resnick, whose last appearance was in 1998, makes a welcome return in Cold in Hand. I've never understood why Resnick didn't become a huge hit when so many lesser fictional cops gained wide public attention. The good news is that this resuscitation will be followed by a re-issue of the original ten novels.

D.I. Resnick, now living contentedly with his former sidekick and protégé, D.I. Lynn Kellogg, is called in from his backwater duties to help to seek the killer of a young black girl, shot in a gang fight. Kellogg had intervened to try to stop the skirmish, and has been accused by the dead girl's threatening father of using his daughter as a human shield to save her own life. Kellogg herself is looking into a murder at a massage parlour, linked to Eastern European criminality; her vulnerable main witness disappears. Harvey is as excellent on human relationships as he is on police procedure.

The Appeal by John Grisham
Century, £18.99

The Appeal, John Grisham's latest, is an angry book, so much so that one is tempted to suggest that his social conscience has become more important to him than his uncanny ability to write some of the most successful thrillers of the past two decades.

The appeal of the title is brought by a large, greedy, uncaring corporation that had allowed toxic waste to enter the waters of a small Mississippi town, poisoning many of its citizens. A jury had awarded the victims $41 million compensation.

The corporation, led by the truly villainous billionaire Carl Trudeau, knowing it has no good grounds for winning its appeal, resorts to a different tactic. With elections for the state's Supreme Court judges imminent, it uses its wealth to fix the election in favour of a tame candidate who would be sure to rule in the appellant's favour, thus guaranteeing a five to four majority. But something personal happens to put his loyalty to the baddies at risk. Which way will he vote? The Appeal is neither deep nor subtle, with few frills and thrills, but Grisham manages to make it a tense, thoughtful absorbing read.

This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds
Harvill Secker, £12.99

In theory, Fred Vargas's novels ought not to work. The storylines are, almost always, wholly unbelievable. The characters, with few exceptions, are weird, exaggerated and unconvincing. And yet, when she assembles her unique, unreal mixture, what emerges is irresistibly gripping, powerfully written and quite often frightening. In This Night's Foul Work, the eccentric Commissioner Adamsberg links the death in Paris of two drug dealers, their throats slit, with the curious disturbance of graves; hunts a prison escapee nurse who had killed 33 patients; seeks the secret of the third virgin and an explanation of a heart ripped out of a shot stag. His team includes a cop who speaks in rhyming poetry and a huge woman who can sleep standing up. Grotesque and unsettling scenes abound.

Fatal Lies by Frank Tallis
Century, £12.99

Frank Tallis is a real-life shrink who has created, in Max Liebermann, an interesting shrink-sleuth, a disciple of Freud in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. He applies his psychoanalytical techniques to help his friend, Inspector Rheinhardt, to solve crimes not susceptible to the usual detection methods of the time. In Fatal Lies, a young cadet at a military school is found dead in the laboratory, evidence of razor cuts on his body. Investigations reveal the existence of a nasty group of sadistic bullies, but there's also a possible motive for murder in the dead boy's surprising extra-mural activities. Liebermann, his own emotions in disarray, guides the police to the right path, perhaps with too much explanatory stuff.

Nevertheless, it's a sound tale, told with humour and elegance. An important plus is Tallis's atmospheric evocation of a scintillating Vienna at the height of its artistic, intellectual and medical influence.

Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis
Sort of Books, £7.99

Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis, is an impressive novel set in a milieu hitherto unused in crime fiction. Jian, a Chinese cop from the Siberian border, arrives in England to find his daughter, a student in Leeds, who has disappeared. He knows nothing of England, speaks no word of the language and has no contacts. Bewildered, he finds himself enmeshed in the desperate world of illegal migrant workers and their cruel criminal masters.

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