Crime Fiction: Fast cars, guns and babes - perfect!

As the old song goes: "June is bustin' out all over," and this year in the world of crime fiction it certainly is. It's been a long time since I've seen so many important titles published in such a short period. First off the stack is Looking Good Dead by Peter James (Macmillan £12.99). Now I try to avoid reviewing two books in a row by any author, because there are just so many good novels that deserve a mention, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I couldn't put it down. Tom Bryce finds a CD on his commuter train on the way home to Brighton one evening and it changes his life in a most shocking way. Meanwhile, a few miles down the road a man walking his dog makes an equally shocking discovery. This is the second novel featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, and it's even better than the first.

One of the things I love about James Lee Burke's novels is the fact that no matter how vile, vicious and lawless the characters are, they still speak with an old world Southern politeness that's addictive. In his latest, Pegasus Descending (Orion £12.99) Dave Robicheaux lives more and more in a parallel Louisiana universe where everything is coloured by his alcoholism, and where he sees things out of the corner of his eye that are invisible to the rest of the world. This time, murder, robbery, old feuds and old friends figure. Pegasus Descending is a major work by a major writer, and to tell you the truth I'd read a shopping list he wrote and count myself lucky. The book ends with he coming of Hurricane Katrina, and I can't wait for him to write about New Orleans post-apocalypse.

In Piece of my Heart by Peter Robinson (Hodder £12.99), we're back in 1969 and the dream of love is dying. The Beatles have split, and Elvis is back. Up in Brimleigh Beacon, Yorkshire there's been a rock festival featuring Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin, plus a local band heading for the big time called The Mad Hatters. But someone missed the music. Like the dream, she's dead too. Murdered. DI Stanley Chadwick from Leeds gets the case much to his disgust. Hippies! I ask you. Move on to 2005, and DI Alan Banks gets another murder case: Nick Barber, a freelance rock journalist (no relation to our own eminent film critic), who by coincidence was writing an article on the 40th anniversary of The Mad Hatters. Or is it more than coincidence?

Piece of my Heart brilliantly evokes the time of British psychedelia (which I remember as standing in a muddy field sucking on a weak joint), as well as being a terrific contemporary crime novel.

Simon Kernick's fifth novel, Relentless (Bantam £10), begins on an ordinary day, when an ordinary bloke with an ordinary wife and family receives a phone call from an old mate and everything falls apart in a Kafkaesque illustration of what can happen to an innocent man when his whole world turns against him. That ordinary day Tom Meron is stabbed, run over, beaten, kidnapped, threatened with as knee-capping, arrested and charged with murder, and it's not even dark yet. But worse is to come. Much worse. With more ordnance than Woolwich Arsenal, this is probably Kernick's best novel yet. I loved it, and gobbled it up as fast as possible.

It must be a blast to be a businessman. Big bucks, but oh, the stress. I'd rather stay at home and read books. Funnily enough, books like Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder (Orion £12.99) which is about just that sort of businessman, Jason Steadman, who is doing well in the electronics business, but not well enough for his uptight missus. Then he meets Kurt Semko, ex-Special Forces, driving a tow truck, after Jason does a dumb turn in his Acura, and goes off road in the worst way. They become friends, and Jason gets Kurt a job in security at his firm, then Kurt decides that Jason needs help with his career which he expedites by killing the opposition. Good move.

The relationship between the two men is extremely weird, almost sexual in a creepy way, until Kurt goes on the turn and puts Jason and his wife in extreme danger. Finder's novel is as tight as a garrotte, but with twice the laughs.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (Quercus £12.99) is set in Australia where Joseph Cashin, an Aboriginal cop with a taste for Maria Callas, in constant pain from old injuries caused by a car crash that killed another policeman whose death haunts his dreams, gets roped in to a murder of a Melbourne bigwig. In search of the truth, Cashin drives the back roads covered in road kill. Cats, rats, foxes, rabbits, and a Joey with arms outstretched as if crucified. The Broken Shore is a sad, desolate novel, as Temple chronicles the death of an area, on the down for the locals, but the up for the rich who come to play. It's a stone classic. Hard as nails and horrible, but read page one and I challenge you not to finish it.

It's not quite a three-hour drive from Houston to Austin, Texas. So when Evan Casher receives an early morning call from his mother to do the journey he's not keen. But he does. It's his mum after all. But when he gets to Houston she's been murdered. Nastily. And there are two hitmen waiting for Evan. But that's not all.

"Evan, in your life nothing is as it seems." These words are spoken by a bald man who kidnaps Evan from the cops who are taking him to make a statement after the killers are dealt with. Panic, by Jeff Abbott (Time Warner £6.99) is a hottie, a real who, why and what's happening novel. My only problem with it, is that it seems to be populated by a bunch of characters desperately looking for a script writer, screaming: "Film us, we deserve it." Expect it at a multiplex near you soon.

Talking of films: The unnamed hero of Drive by James Sallis (No Exit Press £12) is a kid who blows into LA and starts working as stunt driver on crime movies. He's the best. Word gets around and he's approached to do some driving for real bad guys. Why not? It's what he does. Just driving from A to B and that's it, until he's double crossed on a job and seeks revenge. Fast cars, guns and babes. Just my cup of tea.

So that's your summer reading sorted. And these are just the cream of the crop. I could write about twice as many, but I've run out of space. There's always the end of the year roundup. Enjoy.

To order any of these titles with a 10 per cent discount (and free p&p) call Independent Books Direct on 08700 798 897