JL BLACKHURST, author of THREE CARD MURDER (HQ, £8.99), must have a degree in Fun Engineering, judging by the way she’s constructed this multi-faceted delight for crime fans.

It’s set in Brighton, where acting DI Fox is in charge of a murder inquiry for the first time — and it turns out to be a locked-room mystery, just the sort of insoluble puzzle that could ruin her career. When she finds out who the victim is, she has bigger things to worry about, and no choice but to re-establish contact with her sister. Sarah isn’t a cop: she’s the best con-woman on the south coast.

Long cons, grifters, no less than three impossible crimes, conspiracy, serial killing and police procedure – this book’s got it all.

There’s also a lot of fun to be had from MURDER AT THE RESIDENCE by Stella Blomkvist (Corylus Books, £9.99). This series has long been popular in Iceland, where the identity of the pseudonymous author is still an unsolved mystery. The protagonist, also called Stella Blomkvist, is a full-of-life Reykjavik lawyer who has scant regard for authority.

This episode takes place in 2009, as Icelanders seek revenge on the crooked politicians and bankers who have destroyed their economy. Could that be a motive when a financier is found battered to death, supposedly by Stella’s befuddled, dope-addled client?

A struggling Boston novelist, approached by the US Marshals Service with an unconventional offer of work in THE LIE MAKER by Linwood Barclay (HQ, £20), has two good reasons for accepting.

First, he needs the money and second, when Jack was a kid his own father disappeared into the witness protection programme. Now that he’s going to be writing fake back stories for people relocated by the programme, perhaps he can he use his new contacts to reconnect with his dad.

Of course poor Jack doesn’t know he’s in a Linwood Barclay thriller, entangled in an intricate spaghetti of perfectly judged twists, and therefore nothing that happens to him is what it seems.

RUSTED SOULS (Severn House, £21.99) sees the end of a much-loved series, with the 11th and final outing for Chris Nickson’s Leeds detective, Tom Harper. It’s now spring 1920, and Chief Constable Harper is only weeks away from retirement.

He is driven by a personal need to leave his in-tray empty of major investigations when he goes. But in a city still haunted by the horrors of the world war and the pandemic which followed it, that won’t be easy.

Top of Tom’s list of worries is a gang of ex-soldiers who are using the discipline and all-for-one spirit they learned in the trenches to rob jewellery shops – and whose willingness to use violence is clearly growing.

This sequence of novels, with its blend of social history and police procedural entertainment, will stand for some time as one of the monuments of historical crime fiction.

Pleasingly, the last book is among the best of the lot.