A new street drug is causing gang wars across Belfast, in Fire And Brimstone by Colin Bateman (Headline, £14.99), with death tolls rivalling the height of "the troubles."

One apparent casualty is a media mogul's student daughter, who has vanished after a massacre at a party.

Former reporter and reluctant private eye Dan Starkey is hired to find her, dead or alive. This would be hard enough for a half-way competent detective but for the disaster-magnet that is Starkey it's near impossible.

Often brutal, consistently foul-mouthed and frequently hilarious, the Starkey novels continue to be among the most chaotically inventive thrillers on the market.

The publisher's description of Sycamore Row (Hodder, £19.99) as "the sequel to A Time To Kill" is slightly misleading.

John Grisham's first book was a tense legal thriller, whereas this is more of a courtroom drama. It does feature the same lawyer Jake Brigance - and the same poisonous stew of class and race - in a setting where a terrible history of violence and oppression is still within living memory.

In 1980s Mississippi a white timber merchant, dying of cancer, commits suicide. He leaves Brigance instructions that his fortune must go to his black maid, rather than to his estranged children.

But in that place and time, the idea of a poor black woman inheriting millions is unlikely to be acceptable to any jury. Brigance's only chance of winning is to solve the mystery of why a rich old white man would make such an eccentric will. Not a thriller, then, but as engrossing as any could be.

Former DI John Rebus is back from his brief retirement, in Saints Of The Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Orion, £18.99).

But the only vacancy in Edinburgh CID is for a Detective Sergeant, leaving DI Siobhan Clarke theoretically in charge of her former mentor.

Of course, no-one has ever really been in charge of Rebus, least of all himself.

While he and Clarke investigate a minor crime which may have links to the murder of a leading figure in the "Yes to independence" campaign, Rankin's other series character Malcolm Fox of internal complaints is reopening a case from Rebus's first days on the force.

He was part of an undeniably dirty team back then. But how dirty was he? And where are his loyalties now?

It seems an odd thing to say about one of the most successful series of crime novels ever but I feel that Rankin is just reaching his peak. His recent books are the most interesting and entertaining of his career.

After years spent in a convalescent home, eccentric ex-headmistress Mrs Preau returns to live alone in her old house in a French suburb in The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubiere (Trapdoor, £13.99).

She becomes obsessed with the belief that a neighbour's child is being mistreated but, given her own tragic history, will anyone believe her?

A thoroughly menacing psychological thriller, this French bestseller has real empathy and considerable humour.