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A DARKER DOMAIN

By Val McDermid, Harper, 355 pages, $31.30

Val McDermid is one author who knows exactly how to pull me into a story. In A Darker Domain, she sets the hook with just a couple of opening paragraphs that end with: "This is how it begins." From that point on, I couldn't put this book down.

It's June, 2007, when a young woman goes to the Glenrothes Police Station in Fife, Scotland, to report a missing person. The individual is a miner named Mick Prentice, and he has been gone for 24 years. Why did no one report him gone? Because it's been presumed that he was a "blackleg," a miner who, during the horrific miners strike in 1985, left his family to work as a scab. No one reported him missing because his wife and child, his neighbours and former friends, no longer cared to know anything about him.

But his daughter needs him to save her child's life, and so, after much soul-searching, she has decided to find him. But after more than two decades, he's not where he's supposed to be, where everyone believed he was. He is missing.

The case comes to Detective Inspector Karen Pirie, of the Cold Case Review Team. Technically, Prentice isn't a cold case, since from all the meagre evidence, he's alive somewhere. But Pirie is intrigued by the possibilities, and she is moved by the young mother's plight.

The real problem is that Pirie is already deeply involved in a more politically important cold case. New evidence has appeared in the 1985 abduction and murder of Catriona Maclennan Grant, only daughter of the richest man in Scotland and one of the wealthiest in the world. Catriona was beautiful and talented. She was kidnapped with her infant son and, in the course of the ransom handover, she was shot and killed. Her child disappeared and is presumed dead.

But now a clue to the case has appeared in, of all places, an abandoned villa in Tuscany. And the Grant family hires its own journalist to handle the publicity and the investigation.

McDermid carries the two cases back and forth from several different points of view, and it works beautifully. The suspense is harrowing, especially when a dead body turns up in a very surprising spot. What Pirie knows, learns and doesn't know is all carefully plotted, and while you may figure out some of the story, you won't uncover it all. This is definitely first-class McDermid, and that is very, very good.

THE REDEEMER

By Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett, Random House Canada, 457 pages, $27.95

The Redeemer is the fourth Harry Hole novel in translation from Norwegian author Jo Nesbo. and it's a tour de force. Nesbo has a plot here that is so tightly constructed and compelling that it's impossible to put the book down.

This is a serial-killer story, and one with a punch. The killer is as faceless and proficient as the Jackal in Frederick Forsythe's masterwork. The victim is killed in Oslo during a Salvation Army band performance, and, before anyone dies, some Salvation Army officers engage in some slightly sinful acts.

But just what is going on with these young people? Nesbo puts some slight touches of evil into quite normal little interchanges. All is not quite right with a pair of lovers and a couple of unhappy brothers. Nesbo is a subtle writer and the suspense is in the nuances.

As for Harry Hole, the policeman hero of the series, he's one of the best of the new breed of Scandinavian coppers. He's both professional and intuitive, and he relies on his team to uncover a trail of death moving across Western Europe.

What's clever is just how the clues are dug up in a seemingly impenetrable case. There is no connection between the killer and the victim, no weapon and, of course, no discernible motive. How Hole uncovers the links in a chain of death is what keeps the story moving, and Nesbo never lets up on the truly gripping suspense. Absolutely Nesbo's best translated into English so far, and, I expect, one of the year's best.

THE RENEGADES

By T. Jefferson Parker, Dutton, 338 pages, $29.50

This is the sequel to L.A. Outlaws, which starred the female descendent of Hispanic hero/outlaw Joaquin Murrieta and introduced L.A. Sheriff's Department Deputy Charlie Hood. The Renegades is about outlaws, modern cowboys and image, and it's brilliant, witty and, in many ways, very disturbing.

The story picks up where Outlaws left off. Senorita Murrieta is dead, but Charlie is quite alive, in disgrace for having uncovered a large theft ring headed by a member of the LASD, now in prison. Charlie's punishment is banishment from the homicide squad. He's now riding a car in Antelope Valley, the county's outer edge. Beyond AV is the Mojave Desert.

His partner is Terry Laws, one of the Valley's noblest deputies. Everyone loves Terry. He's handsome and stalwart. He stands up for his partners and he runs the Christmas toy drive for local kids. So it's a bit of a shock when someone kills him right in the patrol car with Charlie looking on. Who could want Laws dead? More to Charlie Hood's point, why did the shooter leave him alive as a witness?

The murder opens this story and, from that point on, Parker never lets up. There are two narrators and the story moves along chronologically from two different viewpoints, and this adds both depth and some really fine twists to an already beautifully set up plot.

Parker just gets better and better.

DRAWING DEAD

By Grant McCrea, Random House Canada, 389 pages, $29.95

I'm not a poker fan, so I wasn't initially attracted by this series featuring lawyer-turned-card player Rick Redman. But Drawing Dead has me convinced. Yes, the plot turns on a card, but that's a bit like saying Myron Bolitar is just another sports manager. Grant McCrea, a semi-retired senior litigator, originally from Montreal, knows his law and his cards, and he also knows how to pace a crime novel.

It takes a murder to get Rick Redman to decide to leave his law practice. What's he going to do next? Why not combine two hobbies, cards and private investigation. He can make money and also chase gold and glory at the World Series of Poker, in Las Vegas.

Of course, on the way to all that glory, he needs to pay the bills. So when a gorgeous woman asks him to locate a missing person, well, it's all in a day or two's work. But he ends up in a serious (and potentially deadly) game with some Russian mobsters, and that's all the beginning of his life as a PI on the Strip.

The plot is slightly contrived, but McCrea has some good lines and he's got a nice noir touch with both setting and dialogue. Fans of CSI and of poker will both love this one.

THE BELLINI CARD

By Jason Goodwin, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 304 pages, $31

Jason Goodwin won an Edgar for The Janissary Tree, his first novel set in 19th-century Istanbul, featuring the eunuch, cook and investigator Yashim. It was a brilliant debut, followed by the equally fine The Snake Stone, but in The Bellini Card, Goodwin and Yashim really hit their stride.

There's a sultan and a Bellini portrait, and the plot takes Yashim and his friend Palewski to Venice in all its slightly sultry, slightly tawdry glory. There is a murder, of course, and the suspects include faded aristocrats and a mysterious and very beautiful contessa. If you want to completely escape the chilly, dreary modern world, this is the book to take you away.

A SNOWBALL IN HELL

By Christopher Brookmyre, Little, Brown, 393 pages, $24

Sick and tired of Octomom and Canadian Idol? Don't care who's still lost on the island? What if you could have your very own little survivor game, kill off those tiresome reality "stars," maybe even put it all on TV, get the cops involved.

That's the premise of this brilliant, funny novel by the author of A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil. Brookmyre introduces Simon Darcourt, serial killer extraordinaire, and pits him against a cop named Angelique De Xavier. But Simon isn't the only killer on the loose, and, surprisingly, he's not the worst, either. This novel posits the idea that "each society get the serial killers it deserves," and does so with a scathing satirical edge.