A WOMAN’S murder is followed by the suicide of her husband at his workplace, the engine room of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine.

But, in Tenacity by JS Law (Headline, £13.99), the suicide looks dodgy to Lieutenant Danielle Lewis of the naval police, while the murder reminds her of a previous case.

If her fears are correct, then something terrible is happening on HMS Tenacity. To find out what, she’ll have to sail on the boat’s next mission.

For most of us the very idea of life in a tin can hundreds of feet under the sea, with barely enough room to turn round, is sufficiently terrifying without the added complication of trying to simultaneously unmask and evade a ruthless killer.

It’s certainly a perfect setting for a mystery thriller and this debut author, himself an ex-submariner, makes full use of the claustrophobia to scare. And he has the tradecraft to fascinate.

The Nature of the Beast (Sphere, £19.99) takes place in the almost idyllic but extraordinarily eventful Canadian village of Three Pines, the setting for many of Louise Penny’s previous books featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of Quebec’s homicide department.

Gamache is now a resident rather than a visitor, having retired there with his wife. But, of course, that doesn’t stop him investigating when a local child — notorious for alarming his neighbours with emergencies that exist only in his wild imagination — goes missing.

It looks as if the boy’s latest crazy tale might have been true after all.

This is one of the most enjoyable entries yet in a series which spices up the traditional English village-style whodunit with a perfectly-judged pinch of the bizarre. It also proposes an audacious solution to a political scandal of the 1990s which in real life ended in mystery.

William Falkland — former soldier in Charles Stuart’s army turned reluctant “intelligencer” for Oliver Cromwell — returns in The Protector by SJ Deas (Headline, £19.99).

It’s 1646 and what has become known as the first civil war is over but far from settled.

The sister of John Milton, poet and influential propagandist, has disappeared. Milton is certain she’s been abducted by Royalists to silence his pro-Parliament pen.

A good plot, with the unchanging horrors of war at its heart, provides the skeleton for a lovingly researched historical novel.

Glasgow police forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is called in after the killing of a modern-day witch in The Special Dead by Lin Anderson (Macmillan, £12.99).

The lively young Wiccan was last seen leaving a bar with a casual pick-up. But evidence found at her flat suggests that she was also involved in something far more dangerous, concerning a number of prominent men.

If Rhona’s colleagues can’t identify the anonymous Nine in time, further deaths will surely follow.

This unusual police procedural series has been running for more than a decade but shows no signs of flagging, with its solid plotting and recurring characters who are worth getting to know.