From demons in Brighton to death in Venice — the pick of new crime fiction

Now that unabashed sex scenes in both crime novels and Hollywood films are generally eschewed, Resolution (Cape, £20) is a bracing reminder that Irvine Welsh is more than happy to assault current shibboleths. His new crime novel liberally features unbuttoned eroticism, but then the Scottish writer has been a provocateur since Trainspotting’s heroin theme outraged Booker Prize judges back in 1993.

This latest novel in his unsparing series featuring maverick ex-detective Ray Lennox could have been even more uncompromising, but Welsh apparently dropped the notion of having the novel written from a paedophile’s point of view. However, it’s still caustic stuff, with Lennox relocated from Edinburgh to Brighton, reluctantly confronting childhood trauma and the disappearance of boys in foster care. Welsh has wryly noted that he has never received a literary prize, and this new book is unlikely to change that fact, but those who relish his unvarnished, in-your-face narratives will get more than their money’s worth.

How far should morality intrude when moving large sums of money? Megan Davis hit the ground running with the conspiracy-based thriller The Messenger in 2023, and Bay of Thieves (Zaffre, £18.99) continues her upwards trajectory, this time into financial thriller territory. Rob is a consultant who specialises in finessing the money of the super-rich and is not above money-laundering for eastern European oligarchs. When he enlists his local agent Vanessa — herself already compromised — to effect a massive money transfer, she bites back her moral qualms and does her boss’s bidding. Needless to say, things become both murky and murderous. Davis is very much a name to watch.

Unlike retirement homes populated by elderly sleuths, there are milieux as yet under-visited by the crime fiction genre — such as international surrealist exhibitions. The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby (Macmillan, £16.99) by Ellery Lloyd — a pseudonym for writing couple Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos — plugs that gap, as British expat painter Julia Willoughby exhibits in 1938 Paris her sole masterpiece. Without explanation, it is withdrawn, and she dies in a fire soon afterwards, the canvas apparently lost. But in 1991, art student Caroline Cooper, an expert on the painting, visits Dubai to authenticate the rediscovered canvas. What follows is a richly ingenious puzzle novel, adroitly juggling disparate timelines and addressing such issues as the underrepresentation of women in fine art.

The culture shock that Japanese fiction can afford western readers is exemplified by Atsuhiro Yoshida’s Goodnight Tokyo (Europa Editions, £14.99, translated by Haydn Trowell), a novel comprising 10 interconnecting stories.

The timeless quality of Tokyo in the wee small hours is evoked as taxi driver Matsui encounters eccentrics and insomniacs alike. Some will find the stratification of the jigsaw puzzle narrative unappealing, but rewards are plentiful.

Clearly, a career as crime fiction buyer for the Waterstones bookshop chain is a useful entrée into the world of writing the stuff, and Joseph Knox has had a stellar rise since making the transition. Imposter Syndrome (Doubleday, £18.99) initially seems to reference Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley: Lynch, an impoverished conman encounters an heiress, Bobbie, en route to rehab treatment, and the latter mistakes him for her missing brother. Should he take advantage of the mistake and assume a new identity? The ambitious Knox, however, has other fish to fry than simply echoing his American predecessor, and Lynch’s investigation into the complicated familial tangle of Bobbie’s relatives leads him into a world of lethal duplicity and shifting identities. It’s Knox at his mesmerising best.

The cutting-edge Chris Brookmyre writing cosy crime? Well, what we have in The Cracked Mirror (Abacus, £22) is not so much a homage to Golden Age crime writing as a rigorous examination — and inversion — of it. The elderly twinset-and-tweed Penny Coyne, murder-solving in an idyllic English village, has her Marple-style ethos set against tough LAPD homicide detective Johnny Hawke in what amounts to a piquant synthesis of Agatha Christie and US master Michael Connelly. With its cross-Atlantic narrative (beginning with a death in a British church and the murder of a US screenwriter), this is a brainteaser energised by its narrative splicings.

Finally, two highly accomplished novels set in the canals of La Serenissima. The Night in Venice by AJ Martin (Weidenfeld, £22) again has echoes of Ripley, this time commingled with EM Forster’s A Room with a View; Martin writes in a truly distinctive and allusive style. Has the youthful, damaged Monica killed her guardian? And the impressive The Venetian Sanctuary (Constable, £22) by Philip Gwynne Jones — a Venice resident — sports a murder in a monastery and malign secrets in the dark heart of the lagoon.

Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Simenon’

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