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 The Riot Act by Jon Stock
Serpent's Tail, £8.99
Serpents' Tail is a consistently interesting crime list, with an array of excellent authors ranging from Walter Mosley to Russell James. Jon Stock's first novel is a worthy addition. Driven by betrayal - the classic thriller theme - it is a heady mix of drugs, paranoia, street wisdom, MI5, anarchy, New Age beliefs and age-old double dealing. The central character - Dutchie the anarchist - is looking for revenge after his girlfriend is blown up by a bomb in Oxford Street. Drugged and dreadlocked, he ends up finding something which is infinitely more complicated. One of the delights of this book is that one can never be quite sure where the narrative is going. It is a pity that so few thrillers with political overtones show such freshness and originality. 

 The Poison Tree by Tony Strong
Doubleday, £12.99
The title of this unusual first novel comes from one of Blake' best- known poems. Messily divorced, Terry Williams returns to Oxford to finish her doctorate in detective fiction. She rashly buys a house on Osney Island, despite the fact that a few months earlier the house was the scene of the brutal and unsolved murder of a male student. The killer is still walking the streets of Oxford, searching for prey, searching for young men.
Terry is soon sucked into the slipstream of past and future murders. Her lectures on detective fiction form a post-modern backdrop to the story. With the house comes a traumatised cat which eats its own kittens. The neighbours are a nasty bunch - bitchy, randy, and possibly worse. Many of the male characters seem to have drifted into the book from an episode of Men Behaving Badly (they make remarks like 'Red-hot totty alert'). Terry's life is crammed with incident - her academic work, investigating the murder, and a vigorous social life which includes a variety of sexual shenanigans. Sex, in fact, is everywhere in this novel. Terry discovers pornographic letters concealed in her house. Copulation appears to be the principal occupation of all her neighbours, too. Episodes of lesbian and cottaging activity are included - chiefly, it seems, for decoration. This is a novel which has divided the critics. On the one hand, THE POISON TREE is powerful, assured and sophisticated, a chilling excursion into Oxford Noir. On the other hand, both plot and characterisation are frankly unbelievable, and the relentless nastiness, sexual and otherwise, grows tedious. The dollops of undergraduate Eng Lit may not be to everybody's taste, either. Nor is it possible to take altogether seriously a novel in which the heroine is introduced wearing a 'light blue tea dress' (sic) that miraculously changes into a pair of jeans in the space of a few paragraphs. Still, the book undeniably lingers in the mind afterwards and it is worth reading if only to see whether you prefer to love it or loathe it.

 Spike It by Chris Niles
Macmillan, £16.99
Radio journalist Sam Ridley is a well-lubricated disaster, both personally and professionally. Recently ravaged by a messy divorce, he struggles to hold down a job at City Radio. Then fate deals him two more bad cards. Absolutely drunk, he is sent to cover a murder, stumbles into a police investigation, and arouses the violent hostility of a particularly nasty police officer. Still drunk, he says the f-word on air while reading the news. He is promptly demoted to (shock horror) a lowly and probationary job on FEMALE AM, the worst humiliation that a hard-news journalist can suffer.
To make matters worse, Felicia, who produces FEMALE AM, takes herself and her programme far too seriously for Sam's taste.
But when a man called Shark phones, offering information about the murdered woman Elaine York, Sam cannot resist the lure of crime and punishment. The investigation entails enormous quantities of alcohol, some violence, and some interesting sidelights on the character of Felicia. Witty and observant, this assured first novel gives a fascinating (and one hopes partly misleading) glimpse of the life of a radio journalist in London.

 I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass by Paul Charles
The Do-Not Press, £7.00
Billed as the first novel in a series featuring Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, the novel focuses on a nasty murder in London's music business - not surprising in that Paul Charles is, according to the back-cover blurb, one of Europe's best known music promoters and agents. Peter O'Browne, boss of Camden Town Records, is missing. A fire ravages his home near Primrose Hill. And someone is using his credit card in Dorset. Kennedy investigates with a little help from his journalist girlfriend ann rea (a woman who, like k.d.lang and e.e.cummings, spurns initial capitals). Other cases are jostling for his attention, too. The book adds up to an interesting detective novel, traditional in shape but modern in externals. It is particularly to be relished for its music-business background and its evocation of north-west London and - last but not least - a superbly ingenious murder method which must have John Dickson Carr turning in his grave with envy. The title comes, of course, from the Nick Lowe song. An additional pleasure is that each of the short chapters has a splendidly apposite epigraph from the likes of e.costello and v.morrison.

 Faithless by John Williams
Serpent’s Tail, £8.99
Set mainly in 1983, this edgy and elegiac first novel charts a time of change - when the Punk Generation turned, gradually and involuntarily, into Thatcher's Children. Jeff plays sax in a band that's on the verge of making it. But only one of the band, Ross, has the authentic glamour of a rock star in the making. Ross is the one who pulls the girls - including Frank, an art student with skinny legs whom Jeff fancies rotten. But, after a drug-dredged evening in Suffolk, Ross and Jeff leave Frank to die in a fire. A few hours later, Ross sacks Jeff from the band. Real rock stars don't let sentiment cloud their business decisions. But Frank isn't dead. Frank wants revenge, and so does Jeff. And when Ross makes the big time, it seems only natural that they should build a relationship of the basis of an attempt to blackmail Ross. This is the start of an intriguing novel which explores the murky frontier zone between music business and crime. Jeff, the narrator, is an amateur abroad, desperately trying to appear cool in a world where the good times have a nasty habit of descending into violence, even murder. FAITHLESS is an admirably quirky and readable debut, which lingers in the mind after you've finished it..

 Cold Caller by Jason Starr
No Exit Press £7.99
America has a fine tradition of warped white-collar crime fiction. Its protagonists often believe that freedom in the Land of the Free means the freedom to further their own desires, whatever the cost to others. COLD CALLER is a fine addition to this branch of the genre, replete with echoes of the late-lamented Patricia Highsmith. The narrator, Bill Moss, sacked from his prestigious job in advertising, is now a temporary, part-time telemarketeer in New York; a workaholic, he is a sporadically nasty and totally self-obsessed person of a type all too familiar in real life. Equally authentic is the way he cannot understand how dysfunctional he really is. Starr uses this as a basis for a modern morality tale. The narrative is carefully orchestrated, gradually revealing Bill's true nature - not to himself, but to the reader. Gradually the book builds towards its chilling finale. Not a fast-moving or action-packed story, but all the more effective for that. Definitely one to relish.

 Body Politic by Paul Johnston
Hodder and Stoughton, £16.99
Crime fiction is a broad-minded genre, and there's really no reason why a crime novel should not be set in the future. Johnston takes us into the 2020s. The United Kingdom has fragmented into city states, uneasily co-existing with each other. Edinburgh - at least in the minds of its high-minded rulers - has become an enlightened utopia. Private cars, rock music, TV and cigarettes are banned. The economy is geared to the tourists. And, as Quint Dalrymple - unpaid private eye and sacked police officer - knows, the utopia is rotten at its heart. Then a guardswoman is murdered - the first murder in five years. The ruling council is forced to call on Quint, because the modus operandi looks similar to that of the Ear, Nose and Throat Man, a mass murderer whose case Quint worked on and with whom Quint is more intimately connected than he cares to admit.
Soon the story opens out. On one level this is a competent murder mystery which investigates a series of interlocking crimes. On another level, however, it is more than this: Johnston shows us the hidden cost of a utopia - the blighted individual lives and the corrupt society that a utopia engenders. Imagine Ian Rankin revisiting 1984, and then add a strong dash of Johnston's originality. Fortunately this is the first of a projected series. Intelligent and unusual.

 Bird Dog by Philip Reed
Hodder and Stoughton, £17.99
Out there in weird and wonderful Southern California, a bird dog is a person who finds potential punters - i.e. suckers - for car salesmen. Harold Dodge was a bird dog. So expert was he that he even wrote a book on the subject, HOW TO BUY A CREAM PUFF (what ordinary folk might call a second-hand car at a reasonable price). But Harold has left all that behind him. Now he has a real job in an office, one which does not oblige him to cheat people. Then a beautiful colleague, Marianna, asks him to help extricate her from a deal she has made with a used-car salesman. Keen to impress his well-upholstered colleague for the basest of reasons, Harold does his best. The consequences plunge them both into a blackly-comic imbroglio of criminal activities, misunderstandings and finally murder.
Philip Reed has a masterly ability to avoid the formulaic. BIRD DOG, his first novel, is a first-rate caper, wry, exciting and full of unexpected twists. It is hugely entertaining, not least because there is a powerful and sophisticated compassion working behind the humour.

 A Test Of Wills by Charles Todd
Headline, £16.99
At first sight the story of this debut novel, the first of a series, seems cosily familiar. It is 1919 and England is settling back into the comfortable routines of peace after the horrors of World War I. Inspector Rutledge of Scotland Yard, just out of the army, is sent to a Warwickshire village to deal with a nice middle-class murder case: Colonel Harris, a popular landowner, has been shot while on his morning ride. Worse still, the chief suspect is Captain Wilton, air ace and national hero, who is engaged to Harris's ward, the lovely Lettice Wood. Staying at the local inn, Rutledge delves into the lives of the village's inhabitants.
So far so familiar. But Rutledge is not an orthodox investigator. The war has shattered not only his career but also his sanity. Suffering from shell shock, jilted by his fiancée, undermined by jealous superiors, he is at the mercy of two terrors - that he will descend again into the madness of shell shock, and that his career as a detective is over. Owing to the shell shock, he has a constant inner companion in the form of Hamish MacLeod, a young soldier who did not come home from France. Hamish's mocking, cynical, iconoclastic interruptions form a counterpoint to Rutledge's thought processes, often dragging him back towards the brink of madness.
The plot has a Christie-like elegance, the characters are satisfyingly complex, and Rutledge himself is a detective to cherish. These major virtues easily outweigh the minor defects of the book - the occasional Americanism that creeps into the dialogue, for example, and one or two inaccurate historical details. An exceptional first novel - and I look forward to the second in the series.

The Baby Snatcher by Ann Cleeves
Macmillan, £16.99
Ann Cleeves's Northumberland-based Inspector Ramsay novels have a distinctive flavour of their own. THE BABY SNATCHER is Ramsay's sixth outing. It focuses on the inhabitants of the Headland, an isolated coastal community. At the heart of the story is the Howe family - introverted, eccentric, wilfully behind the times. Ramsay comes across the Howes when fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up on his doorstep, desperately - and as it happens unnecessarily - worried about the safety of her mother. Later, when he is attempting to track down a child-kidnapper, Ramsay is brought back to the Headland by the news that Mrs Howe has once again vanished. A child is kidnapped from a birthday party and a body is washed up by the sea.
This is a strong, dark crime novel, distinguished by its intelligent, spiky characterisation. These are people whose actions are rooted deeply and plausibly in their own psychology. Cleeves is particularly good at showing the claustrophobia of enclosed lives. And there is a witty bonus for members of the Crime Writers' Association: see if you can spot the leading lights from the Northern Chapter who make fleeting guest appearances.

Different Women Dancing by Jonahan Gash
Macmillan, £16.99
Gash's new novel reveals a very different world from his Lovejoy series, but a world described with equal skill. A businessman is killed in a seemingly innocent traffic accident. The fatality brings together two very different eye-witnesses - a respectable professional woman and an enigmatic man with a disreputable career. Doctor Clare Burtonall is a dedicated GP, married to property developer Clifford and living in a snug middle-class suburb. Bonn is a man with a mysterious past, a sordid present and a doubtful future: he is a 'goer', a gigolo working for Pleases Agency, a company which caters to the desires of restless and wealthy women.
Clare begins to suspect that the businessman's death was no accident. Worse still, evidence emerges that suggests her husband was in some involved. In this crisis, she enlists the help of Bonn. Soon she too is drawn into the underworld in which he moves. But there are worse crimes than sex for money and human dignity flourishes in the most unexpected places.
This is a distinguished crime novel by any standard. Billed as the first of a series featuring Clare Burtonall, it gives a wholly convincing picture of life in a northern city where big business and the underworld intersect. Humane, intelligent and highly recommended.

Chicken Run by Alma Fritchley
The Women's Press, £6.99
Lesbian crime fiction is a thriving branch of the genre, and Alma Fritchley's first novel is an engaging and witty addition to it. CHICKEN RUN is billed as the first of a series. Letty Campbell, her narrator, has inherited her aunt's smallholding in a small Yorkshire village ("like the Archers on speed"). This has enabled her to flee the fleshpots of Manchester and set up as a chicken farmer. Apart from poverty and the lack of a partner, all is rosy.
A possible solution to the first problem emerges when Julia, Letty's former lover, offers to rent the smallholding for a classic car auction. But everything is not as straightforward as it seems: Julia is involved with some profoundly shady people. Linked to this are other developments involving the village's apparently straitlaced librarian - Miss Marple - and the latter's tearaway niece. "The scenario," Letty comments at one point, "was as complicated as only lesbians can make it."
Fortunately, the complications are reliably entertaining. Warm and intelligent characterisation, witty writing and deft plotting more than compensate for a certain lack of narrative drive. The book is also crammed with fascinating facts about 2CVs and the habits of chickens. Altogether, this an original and enjoyable first novel. I look forward to Number Two.

  Sacrifice Bid by Susan Moody
Headline £16.99
One of the pleasures of the Cassie Swann books is that you do not have to be a bridge-player in order to enjoy them, any more than you need to be a champion jockey to enjoy a Dick Francis novel. Cassie makes a precarious living from bridge. At present, however, her bridge supplies business is sliding into decline and the problem of keeping body and soul together is becoming increasingly difficult to solve. Nor has she heard recently from her erstwhile lover, Sergeant Walsh, the man whose 'ardent hazel stare' is liable to turn her into 'mush'. Fortunately distraction is at hand. Lolly Haden White, an elderly member of Cassie's bridge group, has apparently plunged into a sudden mental decline. Her friends are worried. Is the spectre of Alzheimer's lurking around the corner? But when Cassie begins to investigate, she realises that there may well be external causes for Lolly's distress - causes rooted deep in her mysterious past.
The story rapidly develops into a high-octane mixture of disparate ingredients - a Christmas show in a nearby old people's home, a glamorous cleric, a high-living don, a lesbian couple, amatory advances from several directions, lovingly detailed descriptions of food and drink - and, of course, murder. The result is excellent entertainment, given an additional edge by Moody's indignation about the indignities of old age - especially those which might be avoided if our society were more humane and less mercenary.

Let There Be Blood by Jane Jakeman
Headline £16.99
Billed as 'a Lord Ambrose Historical Mystery', this first novel is clearly designed to be the start of a series. The scene is somewhere in the south of England in the sweltering summer of 1830. Lord Ambrose Malfine has returned from the horrors of the Greek War of Independence and is living in gothic seclusion in his decaying mansion, licking his wounds, both physical and psychological. The murder of a neighbouring farmer and his son jerk him out of his lethargy. The villagers have seized a gypsy whom they believe to be responsible for the crimes, and are determined to crush him on a wheel. Inspired by a fine passion for justice, Lord Ambrose intervenes.
All is not what it seems. Who is the mysterious and unexpectedly ladylike governess at the farm, a lady whose dress is suspiciously stained with blood? And what about the widow of one of the victims, a twee young lady with an addiction to laudanum? Soon the secrets tumble out of the hiding places. An old soldier, whom Ambrose had appointed to look after the two ladies, goes missing. More lives are in danger, including that of Lord Ambrose himself.
Jane Jakeman is splendid on the sinister atmospherics and convincingly disgusting about the physical consequences of bloodshed in hot weather. The story, however, has a tendency to get itself bogged down among irrelevant background detail. And the historical setting oscillates between 1830 and the Golden Age of Costume Drama. Still, this is a readable mystery with lashings of gothic trimmings and more of a touch of the Barbara Cartlands. It will be interesting to see how Lord Ambrose's career develops.

Deadmeat by Q
Sceptre £6.00
Published on a tidal wave of hype, DEADMEAT is not just a crime novel but a style statement as well. Measuring a bijou 6 by 4 by 7/8 of an inch, the book is a talisman for literary-minded clubbers.
Clarkie, the narrator, is a superhero who has just graduated from prison. His tastes run from Aristotle and Plato to rave music and clothes from Oswald Boateng. In no time at all he is sucked back into the darker side of London's club culture. A murderer codenamed the Cyber Vigilante is using the Internet to track down paedophiles; having killed them, he leaves his trademark, a white rat, beside his victims' bodies. Clarkie's brother Bones is making a fortune by selling art over the Internet. Someone else has invented a designer drug - Plug - and is keen to investigate the money-laundering possibilities of the art market. Soon Clarkie himself is suspected of murder (a not unusual distinction, given the circles he moves in). Picking his way through a labyrinth of sub-plots, he sets out to track down the Cyber Vigilante himself.
DEADMEAT has a charm of its own. Rarely have so much sex, violence, drugs and drum-'n'-bass music been crammed between two soft covers. The lack of structure and the frenetic pace of the narrative may grow wearisome, but Clarkie's world has the authentic tang of black street culture. Some characters talk in a kind of patois, rendered phonetically - 'When im frien si ow fas mi han wuz movin, dem jus dress back' - which can be a little exhausting for readers trained in the tiresome orthographical conventions of standard English.
Was the book so poorly copy-edited because the editorial staff at Sceptre have been trained to keep a respectful distance from works of art? Or are they, like Q, determined to show that they are pioneers of English prose? Either way, there is much to enjoy in DEADMEAT. At least it stands out from the crowd.