Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James
Macmillan, £16.99 Buy the book here

The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri trans. Stephen Sartarelli
Picador, £12.99 Buy the book here

Broken by Karin Fossum
Harvill Secker, £12.99 Buy the book here

The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty
Serpent's Tail, £10.99 Buy the book here

Tense, beautifully paced and excellent on police atmosphere and procedure, Dead Man's Footsteps, Peter James's fourth novel featuring Detective Inspector Roy Grace and the Brighton force, is his best.

He brilliantly weaves several strands of crime and detection to merge at the climax. Ronnie, a Brighton businessman in serious debt, uses his fortuitous presence in New York on 9/11 to disappear in the chaos. Abby, leading a secretive and lonely life in London, frightened of being found by the man she'd loved and robbed, receives a text: “I know where you are.”

One decomposed woman's body is found in a storm drain in Brighton; another's in a river near Melbourne. Grace - whose CV includes a loved wife who disappeared many years ago and for whom he perpetually searches - leads the inquiries and faces conspiracies within the force.

Andrea Camilleri shows no signs of flagging. The ninth in the Montalbano series is as fresh and lively as any of its predecessors. The insubordinate, food-loving Sicilian cop is feeling his age: he's a little less impatient and he now writes things down that he would once have easily remembered. If anything, it makes him even more intriguing.

In The Paper Moon, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, he finds himself between two tempting women. One of them asks him to find her missing brother. He does, shot in the head, his trousers down by his ankles. The other woman is the dead man's mistress, married and voracious. Montalbano navigates between the two, and uncovers a world of cocaine and corruption.

Broken is a strange departure for Karin Fossum. The Norwegian writer has attracted acclaim for her dark, moody Inspector Seger novels. The darkness remains, but Broken breaks the formula, not totally successfully. One night a well-known writer wakes to find at her bedside a character she has invented, but not yet used in a book.

He demands that she tells him more about himself as creator and creation indulge in philosophical debates. But there is little tension, and the duo are not interesting enough.

This is an appropriate week for recommending Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead. Bloomsday takes place on June 16, when Dubliners celebrate the exploits of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses. Belfast hardman Michael Forsythe, summoned from his hiding place in Lima, is back in his homeland searching for the kidnapped daughter of crime boss Bridget Callaghan, who has been trying to assassinate him in revenge for killing her fiancé.

She has offered him a deal: if he finds her child, she'll allow him to live. His exciting 24 hours is packed with sharp dialogue and unremitting action.

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