THRILLERS about terrorism are usually predictable in their choice of villains. Many read as if written thanks to a generous grant from the CIA but Michael Palmer has come up with something a bit fresh in Resistant (Headline, £13.99). 

Founded in opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Society Of One Hundred Neighbours has been working clandestinely ever since towards its dream of a US where nobody unable to afford treatment will ever be admitted to a hospital and where disabled children will be looked after by their families — or not at all. 

The “neighbours” plan to make the US great again by ending “entitlement culture.”

At last, they’ve found the means to blackmail the government into following their programme — a lethal superbug, to which only they have the cure. All is going well, until the bug mutates. Now, nobody’s got the cure.

Can a freshly-widowed FBI agent and a substance-addicted ER doctor defeat both the killer germ and the conspiracy? 

Of course they can and in a manner which involves lots of right-wing loons meeting pleasingly sticky ends. 

Palmer’s books are best read at a gallop, so that the righteous thrills overwhelm the occasionally rough-and-ready writing.

The Directive by Matthew Quirk (Headline, £12.99) is a twisty and exciting crime caper. 

Former con-man Mike is determined to go straight. He’s working as a lawyer and is about to marry a millionaire’s daughter but his dreams of respectability are snatched away when he’s forced to take part in an astounding heist — nothing less than stealing the secret information that lies at the heart of US capitalism. 

Somehow he must outwit his ruthless employers without getting arrested — or killed.

If you fancy a traditional closed-circle murder mystery but with a left-wing tang to it, try The Human Flies by Hans Olav Lahlum (Mantle, £16.99). 

In 1968, Detective Inspector Kristiansen faces a real baffler for his first-ever murder case when an old resistance hero is found dead in an Oslo apartment block. 

One of the neighbours must be the killer and since they include an ex-nazi and an OSS agent, the key to the puzzle probably lies in wartime events.

With its conscious echoes of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout, this first whodunit by a well-known Norwegian historian and leftist politician will delight fans of both authors. 

When a San Francisco prison guard’s wife goes missing in The Keeper by John Lescroart (Headline, £13.99) his lawyer Dismas Hardy reckons the only way to prevent the man being convicted of her murder is via the SODDI defence — convincing the jury that “Some Other Dude Did It.” 

He sends his investigator, Abe Glitsky, to search for a likely candidate. But Glitsky becomes convinced that some other dude did, in fact, do it and that the woman’s disappearance is connected to the monstrously corrupt jail where her husband works. 

The latest entry in this popular series is a meaty conspiracy story, replete with vile villains, and victims with plenty to hide.