Is Ruth Rendell over-extending herself? Difficult to be two people and still retain a clarity of individuality. Already this year there has been a Barbara Vine novel, and now, written under her own name, comes A Sight for Sore Eyes (Hutchinson, £16.99 in UK). Not her best work by any means. One is loath to apply the adjective "ridiculous" to the plot, but certainly an amount of credulity is needed to take it seriously. The book concerns the gyrations of three basically mad people: psychotherapist Julia, psychopath Teddy, and angelic Francine. Julia is a control freak who uses the most outlandish of alternative medicine in her efforts to "cure" her patients, Teddy merely kills people for no particular reason, while Francine steps airily through the carnage like a humming bird in a strong wind.
The central theme appears to be Teddy's desire to install Francine in an idyllic dwelling called Orcadia Cottage, in St John's Wood, of all places, and to turn her into the girl of his dreams. As these dreams are of the nightmare variety, surrealism intrudes and reality jumps out the window. A Sight for Sore Eyes gave me a sore head, but Ruth Rendell fans, of who are legion, will surely disagree. I say, bring back Inspector Wexford, and a soupcon of common sense.
Keller, the anti-hero of Lawrence Block's Hit Man (Orion, £16.99 in UK), would give short shrift to Ms Rendell's barmy characters: he'd simply rub them out. As a matter of fact, that's what he does for a living. For payment, of course. Controlled by an old man in White Plains, New York, and his dotty secretary, appropriately named Dot, Keller ranges across the length and breadth of the USA, disposing of unwanted husbands, wives, lovers and, in one case, a character who is afraid to commit suicide but still wishes to step over into the great beyond.
More a linked series of short stories than a novel, Hit Man is beautifully crafted and under-played, and in Keller, Block has created a likeable killer to rival Richard Stark's mad, bad but so charismatic Parker - and if you haven't come across the incomparable Parker novels yet, I implore you to do so at once, starting with the superb Slayground. Staying with the Americans, if you want your thrillers like John Wayne toilet paper - rough, tough and taking no merde from bad guys - then Stephen Hunter's Time to Hunt (Century, £15.99 in UK) is the one for you. Bob Lee Swagger - or Bob the Nailer, America's deadliest sniper - the hero of the same author's Point of Impact and Black Light, is again the protagonist, and this time he is being chased by an old enemy, his Russian equivalent in the sniping business, known as "The Sniper King".
Moving backwards and forwards in time - a lot of the action takes place during the last days of Vietnam in the early 1970s - the book has the pace of a high-velocity bullet, with language as violent as the action it portrays. A couple of examples: "The sniper transfigured before her. What had been the upper quadrant of his face had somehow been pulped, ripped open, revealing a terrible wound of splintered bone and spurting blood"; and: "They exploded as if they'd swallowed grenades and become part of the atmosphere." In Robert B. Parker's Small Vices (John Murray, £16.99 in UK) we are back in the realm of the private detective. His investigator is, of course, Spenser, but this time he is traversing the mean streets of Manhattan, rather than those of his native Boston. Hired by altruistic lawyers - does such a species exist? - to prove the innocence of a street kid named Ellis Alves, who has been accused of the killing of a white co-ed, Spenser is shot by an assassin, survives, but has to play dead in order to take out his enemy with extreme prejudice.
As usual, Hawk, the inscrutable pal, is present, while the excruciatingly sick-making girlfriend, Susan, puts in her regular oleaginous appearances. Parker's Spenser novels are very well thought of and have a big following, but I've never been able to understand why. I've always found them superficial, flip and thoroughly un-exciting. Maybe it's something to do with that macho photograph of Parker on the back cover - how can you take seriously a man who allows such a shot of himself to be taken and then promulgated publicly? Michael Dibdin has created a nice niche for his fictional Italian detective Aurelio Zen, and in A Long Finish (Faber, £16.99 in UK) he appends another enjoyable addition to the series. This time Zen is in Piedmont, in an autumnal setting of vineyards, quiet fields and crumbling farmhouses, his mission to prove the innocence of the scion of an important wine growing family who has been accused of a brutal murder. Attempting to penetrate family loyalties and sieve out truth from falsehood proves difficult for our hero, but naturally, he wins out in the end. The tale is leisurely, the settings exquisitely conveyed, and the mystery nicely plausible. Recommended.
According to the blurb, Last Rites (Heinemann, £16.99 in UK) is to be John Harvey's last Charlie Resnick novel. This is the tenth book in a series which has been unfailingly consistent and compelling in its depiction of the Detective Inspector and his fellow officers in the (curiously unnamed) city of Nottingham. In this one Resnick is at a low ebb: his relationship with Hannah Campbell is wavering, there is suspicion of corruption in the force, the spread of guns has led to the escalation of violent crime, and now a hardened criminal, one Michael Preston who, among other atrocities, has killed his own father, has been released to attend his mother's funeral.
In the event, no one turns out to be as bad as he or she seemed - even the hardened criminal had good reasons for knocking off his old man - and shabby old Charlie with the heart of gold, the cats and the liking for traditional jazz, comes out at the end a sadder and a wiser man. Val McDermid is by now an old hand at crime fiction: her psychological thrillers featuring criminal profiler Tony Hill have won innumerable awards, while her series showcasing the talents of Thai boxing P.I. Kate Brannigan has stood up well to the efforts of her American rivals. The latest Brannigan is Star Struck (HarperCollins, £16.99 in UK), in which our tough super-sleuth has the job of bodyguarding a paranoid soap star, one Gloria Kendal. This allows McDermid to send her wise-cracking heroine on a journey through the dangerous concrete canyons of Manchester, riding shotgun guard on as zany a client as she has ever encountered. The result is an often hilarious excursion into the world of the hard-boiled detective novel - an excursion not to be missed.
Finally, who do we spy galloping up the straight but Dick Francis, with his collection of short pieces, Field of Thirteen (Michael Joseph, £16.99 in UK). Regular readers will know what to expect: a racing background, reasonable story-telling, one-dimensional characters, no sex, very little violence, true-blue heroes and heroines, and despicable villains. Horses for courses, and Francis is your man.