IN THE 17TH CENTURY, a beautiful and respectable wife attended a glittering masked ball and left with the handsome stranger with whom she'd been dancing all night. The following morning her body was found in a courtyard in the backstreets of Holborn in London.

She had been slashed open, her heart, still pumping, lying beside her body. Her dancing partner, according to this legend, had been none other than the Devil himself. The scene of the horror became known as Bleeding Heart Square - the title and setting of Andrew Taylor's terrific new novel.

He sets his story in the 1930s, when its seedy houses were inhabited by a motley array of lodgers, many of whom had seen better days. Lydia Langstone, a young aristocrat fleeing an abusive husband, arrives to seek refuge with her father, a drunk who had abandoned her as a child.

The landlord of the premises is the nasty Serridge, who had seduced the previous owner, the rich but naive Miss Penlow. She has not been seen for four years, but there is a policeman asking questions about her, and a young man equally anxious to find an explanation for her disappearance.

Serridge starts receiving parcels - raw hearts, still bleeding - and Lydia is drawn into the mystery. As it develops, Oswald Mosley's fascists are gaining adherents and dispensing increasing violence. Andrew Taylor has long been in the top rank of British crime writers, never disappointing, particularly strong on depth of characterisation and moody atmosphere. In Bleeding Heart Square he excels himself.

Comparison is inevitable. Take a country that few people know anything about. Create a sympathetic, folksy, detective-type character full of that country's wisdom and traditions. Write charmingly and with humour. Collect the cheques.

Colin Cotterill hasn't reached Alexander McCall Smith's popularity or wealth, but at first blush his books - featuring the septuagenarian Dr Siri Paiboun, the only coroner in Laos - have a similarity to those of the author who made Botswana famous. However, Cotterill writes in harsher vein. Disco for the Departed is the third Siri novel to be published in Britain, though there are seven in the US. The coroner is summoned to investigate the presence of an arm sticking out of a concrete path near the Laotian president's residence. Witty, elegant and informative.

The National Archives has had the excellent idea of issuing short books, based on original material in its own records, looking at notorious criminals and their crimes. The series began with Dr Crippen and John Christie; just published are Ruth Ellis and Mrs Maybrick.

Bleeding Heart Square Michael Joseph, £16.99; 480pp
Buy the book

Disco for the Departed Quercus, £12.99; 272pp
Buy the book

The National Archives crime series £7.99 each

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