Crime fiction roundup – reviews

Where the Bodies Are Buried, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown, £17.99)
This book marks a change of direction for Scottish author Brookmyre, from gorily satirical crime novels such as Quite Ugly One Morning to a more conventional police procedural. Fans, however, need not worry: his writing is as sharply observed and mordantly funny as ever. Detective Catherine McLeod is investigating the killing of a drug dealer; drama student turned private eye Jasmine Sharp is left high and dry when her boss goes missing. There is, naturally, a connection, and both women find themselves on the trail of a gangland enforcer with a terrifying reputation for ruthless brutality. Despite McLeod's mentor's observation that the preponderance of pish-heid bampots and coked-up neds make Glaswegian crime not so much a case of "whodunit" as "cannaemisswhodunit", there are plenty of back-doubles and plot twists in this fast-paced read.

The Dead Won't Sleep, by Anna Smith (Quercus, £12.99)
There's more of Glasgow's seamy side in this debut novel from a former chief reporter for the city's Daily Record newspaper, first in a projected series featuring investigative journalist Rosie Gilmour. Despite carrying the requisite burden of past tragedy, she is a tough cookie, and needs to be, because when she starts looking into the hastily closed case of a dead underage prostitute, she soon finds she has enemies in very high places. Not a "feel-good" read – Smith's Glasgow is a place of unremitting grimness and unreconstructed police chiefs – but strongly plotted, written in plain, punchy language, and very good on the tensions and divided loyalties between the establishment and the fourth estate.

City of the Dead, by Sara Gran (Faber, £12.99)
Another first in a series, set in a dog-eat-dog New Orleans trying to cope in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, City of the Dead introduces private investigator Claire DeWitt, the self-styled "world's best detective". She's certainly unusual: a tattooed, dope-smoking loose cannon who is given to gnomic utterances and places great reliance on the I Ching. This may be the sort of self-conscious eccentricity you'd cross several streets to avoid in life, but it is mesmeric on the page. The core mystery is simple – the disappearance of an assistant district attorney – but it is part of a kaleidoscope of other mysteries which are part of DeWitt's grand quest to understand humanity in general. City of the Dead is a well-executed curiosity: cerebral, weirdly fascinating, and unlike any other crime novel you'll read this year.

The Winter of the Lions, by Jan Costin Wagner, translated by Anthea Bell (Harvill Secker, £12.99)
There are more gnomic utterances here, this time from Finnish detective Kimmo Joentaa, creation of German author Wagner. Joentaa is all set to spend Christmas alone with a bottle of vodka when two bodies are discovered, a pathologist and a maker of forensic models. Both have been stabbed; both appeared on a popular chatshow. The way the crimes are solved is intriguing, if unorthodox, as is Joentaa's relationship with a mysterious prostitute who follows him home from the police station. But this is a rather muffled book, partly because of the torpor-inducing darkness and snow of the harsh Finnish winter, and partly because Joentaa, grieving after the death of his wife, is numb, passive and oddly unconnected to the people and events around him.

Laura Wilson's A Capital Crime is published by Quercus.