IN 1973 a pawnbroker is found dead in an abandoned building in Osaka in Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino (Little Brown, £13.99) and, for all Detective Sasagaki’s efforts, the killing remains unsolved.

Over the next 20 years — and 500-odd pages — the reader follows two apparently peripheral figures, the victim’s son and the daughter of the victim’s mistress.

As these two self-contained, ruthless, somewhat unknowable children grow to adulthood their paths seem to diverge. She becomes a successful entrepreneur, he a less successful criminal.

But there are sinister points at which their lives intersect and Sasagaki is following them too.

The statute of limitations has passed but even in retirement the haunted detective is determined he will live long enough to know the truth.

Partly a fascinating account of the sociological changes wrought by the rise and fall of Japan’s late 20th-century economic miracle, it’s a novel which isn’t full of surprises. But it is consistently suspenseful.

When photojournalist Grace returns to her Edinburgh flat from honeymoon at the start of Louise Millar’s City of Strangers (Macmillan, £12.99), she’s still in mourning following her father’s death and already worrying about the state of her marriage.

Her discovery of a corpse in the flat does little to improve her emotional health.

When the police are unable to identify the dead man Grace feels a compulsion to do their job for them — she can’t bear to think that he might have a family somewhere waiting for him to come home.

She pursues his trail across Britain and Europe, becoming perilously entangled with transcontinental gangsters in an exciting adventure story with a strong emotional core.

Michael Connelly unites his two best known characters for The Crossing (Orion, £19.99).

Former murder detective Harry Bosch is suing the Los Angeles police for constructive dismissal following events in Connelly’s previous book.

Reluctantly, he agrees to look into what his half-brother, defence lawyer Mickey Haller, believes is the framing for murder of one of his clients.

Bosch is soon deep into the investigation, unable to back off when he realises the criminal conspiracy he’s uncovering.

But he and Mickey have very different priorities when it comes to ideas of justice. As ever, Connelly’s produced a solid police procedural, gripping right to the end.

London private eye Cormoran Strike, and especially his devoted but frustrated assistant Robin Ellacott, have rapidly become amongst the best-loved protagonists in current crime fiction.

The main plot of their third case, Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (Sphere, £20), is a slightly daft and very grisly tale about a figure from Strike’s past who is determined to revenge himself on a former military policeman while also multi-tasking as a serial killer.

It’s resolved with what we can only hope is a conscious parody of a Sherlockian clue.

Career of Evil’s thrilling enough while you’re reading it but the real joy of this series comes from the originality of the characters and the authenticity of their relationships.