WHILE heavily pregnant with her fifth child, Andrea Stern stumbles across a murder scene at a New Jersey petrol station in Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza (Titan, £8.99). Even the fact that her toddler manages to contaminate the evidence by peeing all over it doesn’t stop Andrea from noticing what a botched job the police are making of the forensics.

She’s always resented having had to give up her career as an FBI profiler almost before it began to be a mother and wife and she’s not going to miss out on this chance to get her brain back into action.

Andrea allies with a disgraced local journalist searching for the story that might take him back to the top or, at least, away from the bottom. Together they uncover a conspiracy rooted in the US’s apartheid past in what’s a very funny yet very serious debut crime novel by the co-creator of the comic Deadpool.