Crime novelists are sometimes asked if they could ever commit a murder themselves; nobody is more qualified, in theory at least, to come up with the perfect crime. The Argentinian writer Guillermo Martinez, whose first novel, The Oxford Murders, has just been made into a film with John Hurt and Elijah Wood, is clearly intrigued by the idea; his new novel, The Book of Murder (Abacus £10.99, translated by Sonia Soto), asks teasing questions about authorship and the relation between fiction and real life.

His narrator is a struggling writer who has enviously observed the career of Kloster, a much more successful author, with whom he once briefly shared a secretary called Luciana. Years later, Luciana calls the narrator out of the blue and tells him a scarcely believable story about Kloster murdering her relatives in a demonic act of revenge. It began, she says, when she sued Kloster for sexual harassment, unintentionally bringing about the death of his only child. Since then, Luciana's fiancé, parents and brother have died in bizarre circumstances and she fears that her younger sister will be next. The narrator doesn't really believe Luciana but agrees to act as an intermediary. His pretext for contacting Kloster is that he is writing a novel based on these events but then his old rival makes exactly the same claim, plunging readers into a state of uncertainty about whose text they have in their hands. This is a clever, chilling novel that takes crime writing to a new level.

Iain Levison's Dog Eats Dog (Bitter Lemon Press £8.99) is clever in a different way, pitting a fugitive bank robber against a history professor in a college town in New Hampshire. Philip Dixon is on the run when he peers through a window and sees Elias White, an academic in his thirties, having sex on the floor with his neighbour's teenage daughter. Dixon takes this as a sign that his luck has changed and blackmails White into sheltering him while he recovers from a gunshot wound. White is ambitious and frustrated, trying to make his name with a controversial paper about the Nazis, and he adapts with surprising ease to having a desperate man in his basement. This novel by a Scottish author who now lives in America is funny and acerbic,and crackles with raw energy.

Italy has long been an irresistible setting for crime writers, and Donna Leon's novels set in Venice are atmospheric and humane. The Girl of His Dreams (Heinemann £16.99) is a deceptive title for a dark tale involving some of the most despised immigrants to Italy, the Roma families who live a precarious existence in and around big cities. The girl who haunts the dreams of Commissario Brunetti is a Roma child whose body he pulls out of the Grand Canal one morning; nobody has reported her missing and the gold jewellery she is carrying does not belong to her. This tragic discovery allows Leon to explore the lives of families who make a living from petty crime and have little access to justice when they become victims themselves.

Andrea Camilleri's novels set in Sicily, and translated by the poet Stephen Sartarelli, are among the most exquisitely crafted pieces of crime writing available today. The Patience of the Spider (Picador £12.99) is no exception; a plot based around the mysterious kidnapping of a student is simply superb. Camilleri's fellow countryman, Andrea Canobbio, has not been published in English before and The Natural Disorder of Things (Quercus £12.99, translated by Abigail Asher) is a welcome opportunity to encounter a fine and original writer. Claudio Fratta is a garden designer with eccentric views on dealing with clients; his assistant, a Pole with a passion for Italian literature, is driven mad by Fratta's laid-back approach. Their latest client is a wealthy man in a wheelchair who wants an ultra-modern landscape next to his country house, but Fratta takes the job only because he suspects the man's partner is the mysterious woman he rescued from a car crash a few months earlier. Fratta's conviction that she was fleeing from a crime does not stop him becoming obsessed with her, and it turns out that she is not the only one with something to hide.

Sally Hinchcliffe also writes about obsession in Out of a Clear Sky (Macmillan £12.99). Manda has been a birdwatcher since her student days, and is still hanging out with the men who introduced her to the hobby. When her boyfriend leaves her, she feels excluded from the group, going on lone excursions to look at birds until she gets an uneasy feeling that someone is stalking her. This is an intelligent novel about a woman in a man's world, in which Manda's desire to belong blinds her to the danger lurking behind a shared obsession.

White Nights by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan £12.99) is not quite a locked-room mystery but when a stranger is murdered on Shetland, there is a limited number of suspects. Not long before his body was discovered, the dead man made a startling appearance at a party to celebrate the work of two local artists, claiming to have lost his memory; the murder is investigated by Jimmy Perez, a Shetlander who knows everyone except the victim, and one of the best things about the novel is Cleeves's affectionate portrait of this small rural community.

Pam Lewis is an American novelist whose Perfect Family (Headline £19.99), her second novel, exposes the tensions within a spectacularly dysfunctional clan. William is summoned to a holiday retreat in Vermont by his younger sister Pony, who inspires affection and irritation in equal measure. Pony wants to tell him a secret, possibly concerning the identity of the father of her baby son, but the siblings quarrel and William leaves early. Later, Pony's body is found in Lake Aral, astounding everyone who knew her to be a strong swimmer. Lewis is an assured writer whose theme - the secrets and lies of family life - will strike a chord with many readers.

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