Crime: Mayhem from Sicily to Scotland

Any year that sees a new work by the redoubtable Baroness James of Holland Park is a good one, and another chance to encounter Commander Adam Dalgliesh should always be a cause for celebration. In The Private Patient (Faber, £18.99), PD James gives her readers a generous helping of murder and musings on revenge, innocence and guilt. Take a step back into a more brutal age with the latest Matthew Shardlake mystery, Revelation (Macmillan, £17.99). CJ Sansom's novels, set amid the stench and scandal of the 16th century, are impressive both for their intricate detail and serpentine plot twists. Revelation sees Shardlake on the trail of a proto-serial killer wreaking bloody havoc across Tudor London.

A true-crime blast from the past comes courtesy of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bloomsbury, £12.99) by Kate Summerscale. She uses the real Road Hill House murder case of 1860 as the inspiration for her tale and weaves a sensational story, based on contemporary sources, of a case that shook the nation, and changed the public's view of crime.

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In The Pyramid (Harvill Secker, £17.99; trans. Ebba Segerberg with Laurie Thompson), Henning Mankell examines the history of his famous Inspector Kurt Wallander. This collection of stories charts the course that set Wallander on his way to being the depressed, diabetic detective we know and love.

Despite the downbeat title of her latest novel to feature the unlucky-in-love Jackson Brodie, Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? (Doubleday, £17.99) is an uplifting tale of loyalty and overcoming the past, despite arson, a fatal accident and abduction. It also stars my favourite character of the year, the fabulous Reggie Chase.

Leaving his anti-hero Rebus, but not his Edinburgh, behind, Ian Rankin explores the classic heist in Doors Open (Orion, £18.99). His page-turning account of an art con gone awry is a compelling new departure for Scotland's king of crime.

Val McDermid, a contender for Scotland's queen of crime title, uses the miners' strike of 1984 as a backdrop to murder and abduction in A Darker Domain (HarperCollins, £18.99). In a novel as intelligent as it is tightly plotted, crime elements almost take a back seat to the social history she recreates so skilfully.

Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler might be the archetype of the sexy detective, but he's a tortured soul. In The Vows of Silence (Chatto & Windus, £12.99), he has to contend with an assassin doing away with a slew of local brides, plus face more family crises that threaten his shaky equilibrium. The Paper Moon (trans. Stephen Sartarelli; Picador £12.99) is the ninth title to feature Inspector Montalbano. While Andrea Camilleri's Sicily-set books seldom set pulses racing to dangerous levels, they are beautifully written and brilliantly observed.