OVER the course of a few hours six young people are kidnapped in London, the capital city of the supra-nation in which today’s billionaire caste lives. The victims, in Stealing People by Robert Wilson (Orion, £18.99), are all children of the rotten elite, from Russian oligarchs to US corporations. The kidnappers are clearly well financed and superbly organised. But who are they and what do they want? Are these anarchists, making a political point through public spectacle, or just unusually sophisticated criminals? Kidnapping consultant Charlie Boxer is ready to step outside the law to solve the investigation — but he may not be ready for what the case reveals to him about himself. 

If you enjoy kidnap thrillers, you’ll love this one. Not only is it exciting and unpredictable but it must contain more kidnaps per chapter than any book ever written. 

In northern Djursland, on the edge of Denmark, a carpenter working on a job at a convent sees a young woman in trouble. But in Dead Souls by Elsebeth Egholm (Headline, £8.99), as an ex-convict, he daren’t get involved with other people’s troubles. When it turns out that he was the last person to see her alive, guilt drives him to change his mind.

Meanwhile, a local diver has found a box of human bones, dating from the closing days of the Nazi occupation — and the two deaths are bizarrely linked. You need to keep your wits about you with this book. Egholm has several detectives, professional and amateur, at work simultaneously and their investigations run parallel and occasionally cross. The result is a decent mystery, in a very interesting landscape. 

The US marshal in charge of guarding a crucial witness in a case against a cocaine baron believes one of her team is crooked. So, in The Outsider by Jason Dean (Headline, £14.99), she calls in “close protection” specialist James Bishop as backup. But when the Mob attacks, Bishop’s forced into a desperate gamble.

Essentially a standard chase thriller, Dean’s latest stands out because Bishop is a believable and sympathetic character, far removed from the usual cardboard cut-out action hero. Inspector Montalbano of the Sicilian police, by contrast, tends not to rush around in helicopters shooting people. Instead he picks people’s brains, sends his colleagues on initially puzzling errands, and then ponders over multi-course lunches. For the sake of his digestion he takes a cigarette, a glass of whisky and a stroll, while deciding how far he can go to thwart the guilty and aid the relatively innocent without infringing his own peculiar code of conduct. 

In Game of Mirrors by Andrea Camilleri (Mantle, £16.99) a bomb goes off outside an abandoned warehouse, to no obvious purpose, and Montalbano is the object of an unlikely seduction attempt by his beautiful, mysterious new neighbour. Someone’s playing games — and the inspector refuses to accept the role of pawn. Unlike the food, the writing is fat-free and fast. Witty and wise, this is a perfect summer read.