Take equal measures of Carl Hiaasen and Dallas Murphy, and season with a dash of Elmore Leonard, and you have some idea of the mixture whipped up by Philip Reed in his second novel about ex-used car dealer Harry Dodge, Low Rider (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK). Frenetic could be a word coined specially for this foray into Harry's old hunting ground of gang bangers, chop shop operators and car thieves. Back from Chile, to which he had to abscond after being accused of two murders, Harry has to step lively to keep ahead of assorted law enforcers, bad guys and lusty women. His immediate task is to come up with a wad of money to pay the hospital costs of his true love, Marianna, who was injured in helping him get away to South America. To do this, he has to rip off Vicki, wife of one of the men he is supposed to have killed. But Vicki has fallen under the spell of smoothie Dash Shaffner, a crooked insurance agent, who, in turn, is in debt to the Skura brothers, a pair of comically deadly villains.
If Preston Sturges were alive today he would surely delight in putting this surreal farrago on the screen. Until someone of his ilk comes along, we have to seek its hilarity on the printed page. Laugh? Till I cried. An entirely different kettle of fish, Barbara Vine's The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (Viking, £16.99 in UK). Aficionados will know what to expect: urbane writing, a convoluted plot, a deep mystery, slow momentum, well-fleshed out characters. When popular writer Gerald Candless dies, his daughter, Sarah, is asked to write a memoir of her father's life. Delving into the past, she uncovers certain disturbing facts about him, the foremost of them being that her seemingly sainted father was not who he had claimed to be. Having been much closer to him than to her mother, Sarah becomes more and more isolated because of the gap left by his death and the loss of identity inherent in what she has uncovered about him.
Ms Vine builds the tension nicely, as layer after layer of mystery is uncovered, and the climax, although signalled, is still eminently satisfying. Perhaps a certain lack of warmth in the characters - none of whom is particularly sympathetic - takes from the reader's fully rounded pleasure, but this is a small quibble about a book so well written.
Next, a very large tome indeed, Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness (Little, Brown, £15.99 in UK), his sequel to The Alienist. Again set in turn-of-the-century New York, this time the story is told by Stevie Taggert, the street-wise young thief plucked from the city's slums by the renowned alienist - or psychiatrist - Dr Laszlo Kreizler. A serial killer is again at large, murdering and mutilating children, and the indefatigable doctor is on his or her trail, aided and abetted by black servant Lucius, reporter John Moore, fearless private eye Sara Howard, the detective brothers the Isaacsons, and, of course, Stevie himself. Full of lore about the time, the place and the people, The Angel of Darkness is ideal for that summer fortnight away in the sun. But beware of its weight - if you doze off and it falls, it could pole-axe you.
The third of Lynda La Plante's trilogy featuring reformed alcoholic PI Lorraine Page is Cold Heart (Macmillan, £16.99 in UK). This time she is investigating the murder of Hollywood producer Harry Nathan, a man hated by all, and especially by his two former wives, Kendall and Sonja. But it is his present wife, Cindy, who is arrested for the killing, and it is she who hires Lorraine to look into it. When Cindy also dies, a supposed suicide, our heroine breaks into a gallop, with the consequence that all hell breaks loose in a labyrinthine plot that hurtles along like an express train. Skip the bits, though, about the cute dog and the equally cute cop fiancee.
Lynn S. Hightower also writes about a tough female cop in her latest thriller, No Good Deed (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK). She is Cincinnati homicide detective Sonora Blair, and this time she is called in to investigate the disappearance of 15-year-old Joelle Chauncey while out riding on her favourite mare. Was it the girl or the horse that was the target? Against a background of deviousness and double-dealing in the racing business, the plot thumps along nicely, with Blair a sympathetic creation with some human frailties.
Ed McBain's The Last Best Hope (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK), is not an 87th Precinct novel, unfortunately, although Detective Steve Carella does make a cameo appearance. This one is about McBain's Florida-based lawyer, Matthew Hope, and the story features a dead body which is not whose it is supposed to be, a museum robbery caper, and a potentially dangerous situation for Hope and the women in his life. Not as nervy or gritty as the New York-based novels, this series still makes for good reading.
Susan R. Sloan's An Isolated Incident (Little, Brown, £10 in UK), is a superior type thriller, set on an island off the coast of Washington State, which deals in secrets half-hidden, relationships that have festered, and the evil that men - and women - do as a result of dangerous compulsions. A 15-year-old girl is slain, bringing to the surface events from the past that would have been better left dormant. Against a background of close community secrecy, the Latino chief of police and his female assistant strive to unmask a killer before he or she strikes again. And the resolution is nicely ambivalent, as befits a book that scares as well as entertains.
Finally there is Conor Cregan's Ground Zero (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK). Billed as "one of Ireland's most successful literary exports", Cregan gives us an old-fashioned adventure story in the Alastair McLean mode, set in 1945, with a despairing Adolf Hitler seeking to gain control of the atomic bomb and sending a unit of the SS to infiltrate the US army. Completely preposterous, but great fun, Ground Zero won't make any demands on your mind, but it will tickle your fancy.
Michael Painter is a freelance journalist