IN the crime genre one is always on the lookout for something new, and in John Straley's The Woman Who Married a Bear (Vista, £4.99 in UK), it is the exotic locale that provides the extra pinch of condiment. Set in Alaska, the story pays full homage to the region's snowy bleakness, while the weaving of the Tlingit people's myths and superstitions into the plot gives depth and resonance to what might otherwise have been a commonplace tale. The first-person narrator is P.I. Cecil Younger, an alcoholic waster whose only saving grace is his stubborn desire to winkle out the truth from the web of deceit surrounding the killing of a Tlingit hunting guide. It is the guide's mother who hires him, and it is she who tells him the tale of the woman who married a bear, a fantasy that becomes chillingly true to life in the climactic sections of the book. Straley's dark and poetic prose is ideally suited to his subject matter, and the fineness of the writing raises the novel high above a lot of this type of fiction.
John Katzenback has a string of successful thrillers behind him, and In the Heat of the Summer, his first offering, newly reissued by Warner Books (£5.99 in UK), shows why. One of the first such novels to have a serial killer as its villain, it still holds up as a piece of superior crime fiction. Set in Miami in the "mean season" of July, it records the experiences of reporter Malcolm Anderson as he enters into a kind of symbiotic relationship with a psychotic murderer of young women, who uses the sins of Vietnam as a justification for his horrific deeds. The writing may at times be a tad simplistic, but the terrific pace and intriguing story-telling carry the narrative through to a nail-biting conclusion.
Martin Dillon's The Serpents Tail (Fourth Estate, £5.99 in UK) deals with events much closer to home. It is the story of two young Belfast Catholic men, Stephen and Michael, who become caught up in a sting involving the IRA, the SAS and Ml5. Given extravagant promises as to safety and wealth, they soon realise that they are highly expendable in what amounts to a game of life and death. Dillon knows his people, places and politics well, and there is also a telling insight into how the ordinary family life of Catholic West Belfast was carried on despite the brutality and casual killings backgrounding it.
Jonathan Kellerman is a familiar name his publishers have taken simply to putting "Kellerman" on the front of his books - and in The Web (Warner Books, £5.99 in UK), he sends his psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware to an island in the Pacific to sort through the records of Dr William Moreland, a man who has been attending to the physical and mental health of the inhabitants of the tiny community for over thirty years. Soon things begin, to go wrong: a young woman is murdered, potential development threatens the island with pollution, and the aged doctor turns out to be harbouring a dark secret. Good plotting, well-drawn characters, a nice turn of phrase, and witty dialogue make for a return to form by a writer who I thought was beginning to slip a little.
Cry Vengeance, by Ron Handberg (Harper Collins, £5.99 in UK), is also a high professional offering, taken at a good pace and with a number of very effective set-pieces. It tells of TV reporter Jessica Mitchell's efforts to publicise the activities of a band of women who, scarred by sexual assaults, are now taking revenge - the extreme prejudice kind - on their tormentors. There is a lot of fashionable violence, explicit Ianguage and sex, and, if you happened to be a male chauvinist who has just got a card from a group called The Craft Club, I would advise you strongly to head for cover.
Lindsey Davis has carved a niche for herself in the crime fiction with jokey thrillers set in ancient Rome and featuring private investigator Marcus Didius Falco. In Time to Depart (Arrow, £5.99 in UK), Falco and friends deport a notorious criminal called Balbinus, but soon afterwards a new outbreak of robbery and murder leads them to believe that he may have returned. Hot on his trail, Falco and his friend Petro descend into the underworld of Vespasian's Rome, in the process showing that criminal types and their nefarious dealings have not changed much over the centuries. Fast, funny and just about furious - but a bit irritating to find a typo on line five of the very first page.
In Flashpoint, by Lynn S. Hightower (New English Library, £5.99 in UK), the killer is a woman who handcuffs men to the steering wheels of their cars, douses them in petrol, lights up and then sends snapshots of the resultant carnage to the families of the victims. Homicide Detective Sonora Blair is given the job of catching her, becomes involved with the latest victim's brother, Keaton, and then finds herself trying to protect him from the man-hating fiend with the petrol can. High camp it may be, but done with style and flair that make for a good, if forgettable, read.
Simeon's Bride, by Alison G. Tylor (Penguin, £5.99 in UK), is set in a village in North Wales called Salem - aha, nudge, nudge, and so on. The protagonist is D.C.I. McKenna, the investigation revolves around a woman found hanging in the woods, almost everyone in the small community has something to hide, the prose is of the breathless, what's-that-noise-in-the-woodshed kind, and poor old McKenna is pursued to the very last page by grave-cold zombies. Good fun, but not to be read late at night.
The background to Nevada Barr's Firestorm (Headline, £5.99 in UK) is the Lassen Volcanic Park in northern California. Her heroine is park ranger Anna Pigeon and, as well as battling the firestorm of the title, she has to find the killer of one of her fellow fire-fighters among the team marooned in a ravine and awaiting rescue. Hard, tough and yet lyrical in its nature description, the narrative holds the interest right up to the fittingly stylish climax.
Finally, there is Done Deal, by Les Standiford (Pan Books, £5.99 in UK), in which building contractor Johnny Deal battles the mob in Miami. The plot is concerned with a sting to skim millions from the arrival of Major League Baseball in the Sunshine State, but things get a little more personal with Deal when his pregnant wife disappears after a car crash. Standiford's work is highly competent, but he's no Carl Hiaasen. But then, who is...?