THERE are wolves loose in the Scottish Highlands, in Old Sins by Aline Templeton (Allison & Busby, £19-99). The crofters claim to have seen them, and now DI Strang of the Serious Rural Crime Squad has definitely heard one. Everyone knows who to blame, or congratulate, for illegally returning the great predator to its ancient British home: a local businessman, obsessed with rewilding Scotland, and impatient of the bureaucracy involved.

When a resident recognises a new face in the pub, and then dies in a suspicious accident, Strang discovers that the remote village of Inverbeg is troubled by more than merely squabbles between farmers and eco-warriors.

Templeton has delivered another highly enjoyable example of the small-town mystery that encompasses big-world problems.

Blood Ties by Brian McGilloway (Constable, £8-99) is the long-awaited new entry in the Inspector Ben Devlin series, set just over the southern side of the Irish border. This time, Devlin’s investigating the killing of someone who most people think is better off dead. His colleagues, North and South, can’t understand why he’s bothering to chase justice in a case where, as far as they’re concerned, justice has already been done. But Devlin ploughs on, hampered by border rows between the EU and the British state, and the looming threat of a Covid lockdown, believing that murder is murder, no matter the moral standing of the victim.

It’s good to see the return after a nine-year gap of this well-written, subtly characterised and intriguingly plotted series.

Bone-weary barrister Ella is living in a van and hiding from the world, in Olly Jarvis’s The Genesis Inquiry (Hobeck, £9.99), when her legal clerk tracks her down to urge on her a comeback job, heading a Cambridge University inquiry into the disappearance of a resident polymath.

This eccentric genius has vanished while working on what he considered a world-changing new interpretation of early history. Ella soon finds that there are factions who will do anything to prevent the missing man’s discovery coming out, or else pervert it for their own ends.

I think it’s fair to say that conspiracy thrillers involving ancient texts are not usually written by authors as smart and stylish as Jarvis. This is a fun chase mystery with arresting ideas at its heart.

A Hello To Arms (Pathmark Press, £10.83) is the third part of Dennis Broe’s hardboiled private eye trilogy about Harry Palmer, set in post-WW2 Los Angeles.

In this episode, ex-LAPD cop Palmer is hired by a sacked worker who needs evidence to win compensation from an aeroplane factory. In the process Harry learns how the US became a war economy, and why the beneficiaries of that process will take any measures, home or abroad, to keep their magic money tree watered.

If two of your favourite writers are Raymond Chandler and Karl Marx you’ll love this; even if they aren't, I defy anyone not to enjoy the quips, badinage and throwaway philosophy, delightfully faithful to the style of the period.