Andrea Camilleri "The Potter's Field"

The leopard, as I was wont to remark to the late Lester, cannot change his stripes, nor the zebra his spots.

Like that mangled quotation, when Mimi Augello strays from the straight and narrow in the thirteenth title in the Montalbano series he doesn't get it quite right. Long term readers will have been aware of the former lothario's conversion to devoted father and would have wondered hoe long the conversion would last.

The distraction involved when he does forms one of the strands in the plot line in The Potter's Field, and if he doesn't quite get his choice of nocturnal playmate or his alibi for the presumably unsuspecting Beba quite right, neither do those responsible for the killing that provides the main excuse for another exploration of the interpersonal relationships that revolve around Salvo Montalbano.

By this point in the series, of course, there's not going to be much that will be new. There'll be a body, Montalbano will investigate and eventually sort out the puzzle, Mimi Augello will feel undervalued, Fazio will indulge his inclination towards the encyclopaedic when it comes to background research, Catarella will mangle messages, surnames and the language in general, and Livia will engage in trunk line terrorism where Montalbano's peace of mind is concerned.

This time around the corpse has been hacked into thirty pieces and concealed in the titular potter's field in what appears to have been a Mafia killing. The thirty pieces, the environment in which they are deposited and the identity of the body, once revealed all seem to point towards Vigata's aging godfather who has a grudging respect for Montalbano and is, we learn towards the end of the story, opposed to the death penalty.

Identifying the body, however, is going to be largely a matter of guesswork. It has been concealed for a couple of months, does not seem to match any person reported missing, and the killers seem to have gone to some trouble to ensure that identification is impossible. After a couple of months buried in a garbage bag  investigators aren't going to be able to reassemble the pieces to gain an accurate resemblance, are they?

There is, however, one minor detail they've managed to overlook. The autopsy reveals a dental bridge in the victim's stomach. and examination of the object reveals a South American origin.

Then, conveniently, Dolores Alfano, a stunning Colombian beauty whose skin carries the faint scent of cinnamon,  arrived at the police station to report her husband, a sailor with ties to the local godfather, is missing. While his shipboard duties keep him away for months at a time he allegedly makes up for lost time when he manages shore leave, and now, having left a conveniently located love nest to board his ship he appears to have vanished.

Once the sample of her husband's DNA has been tested, the body that has been hacked to pieces turns out to be, as one might suspect, Giovanni Alfano and subsequent investigations reveal that Giovanni's father had been executed in Colombia after falling foul of Balduccio Sinagra, though the local Mafia heavy seems to have adopted the son.

And, as things turn out, Giovanni's dad was hacked into thirty pieces after his death, reflecting the thirty pieces of silver Judas was paid for betraying Christ. Presumably the son has made a similar mistake since his job would provide opportunities to engage in the trade in contraband cocaine. That's what we're supposed to think, of course, and Montalbano knows the truth lies elsewhere.

Discovering the truth, however, is complicated by interactions with those around him. Mimi Augello is in a permanent state of agitation, his wife Beba is concerned and expresses those concerns to Livia who, in turn, gets onto Salvo's case about it. Mimi is, allegedly, involved in numerous overnight stakeouts that Montalbano hasn't actually authorised, but we know what he's really been doing, don't we?

The equally predictable question involves the identity of who he's been doing it with (no prizes for guessing here) and the reason why he's insisting the investigation into the murder be handed over to him. As a result, Montalbano is forced to solve the mystery while apparently off the case himself, save Mimi's marriage and keep Livia from finding out what's been going on.

While all that detail could be seen as a spoiler, the actual plot line is, as always, secondary to the personal interactions and pointed political and social commentary. As usual, Montalbano ends up tying the loose ends together rather well in what might just be the best of the series so far.

That's promising, since the eighty-six year old Camilleri has another seven titles waiting for translator Stephen Sartarelli's attention. On this latest evidence he's still got it, with plenty more to come. The next title, The Age of Doubt is, by all accounts out in the US next May.

But that's for confirmed Camilleri connoisseurs. If you're new to the man and his work I'd strongly advise starting with The Shape of Water and dealing with the stories in sequence...

Graham Hurley "Beyond Reach"

Many years ago on one of the few occasions my family had access to a TV set (limited to school holidays if results merited it) I recall seeing an episode of Z Cars where the police cars were chasing someone who'd vandalised a bus shelter (or some similar structure) and after an hour or so of low key action had failed to catch the culprits,

It was, to put it mildly, a bit of an eye-opener back in an era when the forced of law and order invariably got their man when they set out in pursuit of serious crime.

Since then there have been plenty of examples of the good guys failing to catch the baddies in print, on film and over the TV ether, and the ongoing battle of wits between the Portsmouth police and their arch-rival Bazza Mackenzie has driven Graham Hurley's Joe Faraday series along very nicely indeed.

Mackenzie, for those unfamiliar with the series is the former soccer hooligan turned drug dealer who has managed to elevate himself above the pack and diversified his interests to the point where he's got a finger in most of the pies going around, and the Pompey Plod know it.

The diversity of Mackenzie's interests means most criminal activity in Portsmouth is bound to impinge on them, even if Bazza's not personally involved from the start, and as he becomes involved the possibility that this might just be the chance to get him comes into the calculations as far as the Constabulary are concerned.

Almost invariably, something goes amiss and the opportunity goes down the gurgler, which is what happens here in Beyond Reach, which is where Bazza seems to be permanently located at a distance that's tantalisingly adjacent.

There are at least three chances to nail him here this time around, though the story starts off in a predictably non-Mackenzie manner when a mangled body found on a main road turns out to be a thug who has been terrorising the Portsdown estate. It's obviously a hit and run, but Kyle Munday has been at the centre of a couple of investigation into the stabbing murder of teenage would-be musician Tim Morrissey on Guy Fawkes night. While Faraday and his colleagues aren't exactly heartbroken at this development there are definite questions that need to be asked.

To muddy the waters and provide a degree of distraction, Faraday's latest lady friend has headed to Montreal and an academic position that threatens to become permanent, while his superiors are starting to question his ability to continue in his current role. They have have effectively sidelined him by handing over a twenty-five year old rape case that just might be able to be reopened thanks to developments in the realms of DNA testing techniques.

None of this has an obvious link to Mackenzie, and he's got problems of his own since his married daughter is cheating on her husband, which mightn't have been a problem if it wasn't distracting her from issues involved with Dad's business interests, which is what brings Dad to ask ex-cop turned minder Paul Winter to look into these things.

When Winter does, it turns out that she's gone and got herself rather deeply involved with a certain high-ranking detective, which suggests there's undercover intrigue afoot. We soon learn while DCI Perry Madison had once been second in command on the Major Crime Team he's almost universally loathed by his colleagues. While his involvement with the girl might be part of a wider plan to bring Bazza unstuck you get the distinct impression that his colleagues would be loath to see the man get any credit for anything.

Hurley does internal police force intrigue and machinations consistently well.

His involvement with Esme, however, has also created a second avenue the authorities could use to bring Baz unstuck, though Esme's smart enough to avoid spilling the actual beans. Winter's despatched to tidy things up when a partner in one of Mackenzie's schemes (a block of apartments and a hotel in Spain) turns out to be a London drug dealer with the Metropolitan Police breathing down his neck rather than the casino operator he presented as.

Then, with marital discord causing Esme and her merchant banker husband to leave their three kids in an isolated country house with the au pair some thug breaks into the house and kidnaps the eldest son in an almost clinical operation. The matter is reported \and offers another avenue to infiltrate the Mackenzie organisation since they're going to need officers on the spot when the phone calls about the ransom start coming in.

Apart from tidying up the various strands involving Esme and the Spanish development, Winter also has a problem in the shape of the Tide Turn Trust, Bazza's new pet project which will cement his new respectability through an intervention in the lives of Portsmouth's underprivileged youth.

Although he's been allocated the responsibility for looking after Tide Turn it's not Winter's kettle of fish, and he manages to persuade Bazza they need assistance from a professional social worker, and he comes up with the perfect solution in Mo Sturrock, currently on gardening leave after speaking his mind at a conference rather than reading from the prepared script he was supposed to deliver.

Sturrock's plan to intervene and turn around the lives of the hard core youth gangs that are running an extortion racket to fund Kyle Munday's funeral is the sort of thing that needs a major occasion to launch, and invitations are duly sent to Faraday's superiors, who are still smarting from being outwitted by Mackenzie's decision to pay the ransom for the grandson's kidnapping himself without police involvement and send Winter, supposedly with a million pounds in cash that has ostentatiously been withdrawn from the bank, to lead the police on a wild goose chase.

Then, when Sturrock's scheme looks like providing an opportunity to leave Baz with egg on his face, that one blows up in their faces as well.

Having run through this series as I ran across the titles rather than hitting them in the appropriate order I can vouch for the fact that the individual titles work well enough as stand alones, but I'd still suggest Turnstone as the best starting point. As a series, the books are good enough to have the missing titles on the watch list (you'll find the odd Hurley title in the el cheapo bins at various newsagents) and I'll eventually be doing a reread in the right order exercise.

That's going to happen because Hurley works his plot lines skilfully, with half a dozen seemingly unrelated strands getting themselves tied together in the end. Fair enough, you might say, that tying together apparently unrelated subplots is a key part of the whole crime fiction genre. The difference here lies in the developing interaction between good cop who's rapidly becoming disillusioned (Faraday), bad cop who's gone over to the dark side but still has time for his old boss (Winter) and Mackenzie, who should, by rights be bringing himself unstuck but miraculously stays one step ahead of the pack.

That interaction makes the Faraday series, for my money, one of the best going around and Beyond Reach is quite possibly the best of the series to date.

Ian Rankin "The Complaints"

Having read Exit Music, been disappointed by Doors Open and headed off to reread the Rebus series in order I'd been quite happy to let The Complaints slip past on the basis that I'd wait and see whether the new character had legs, a policy that lasted roughly as long as it took to hear a Rankin segment on Radio National, decide the new character had promise and bring myself into contact with a hard copy of the story.

The retail copy I found myself dragging home was, predictably, The Impossible Dead rather than The Complaints, which in turn produced the do we read these things in order quandary and scrutiny of the shelves down at the Library that produced the volume pictured above.

It was, I thought, best to work in sequence, particularly since I'd heard a bit of background about the character and Rankin's desire to create a completely Rebus-free zone around him.

Well, maybe not quite Rebus free. There could, at some point in the indeterminate future, be an opportunity to bring the two together because Malcolm Fox, working for the Professional Standards Unit at the Lothian and Borders Police, could well end up investigating a matter that has had Rebus involvement.

Professional Standards were, after all, frequently called in to examine aspects of Rebus' career.

As far as the new character was concerned, the aim was to create a non- or anti-Rebus, which Rankin seems to have done by literally listing all the attributes we've come to associate with John Rebus and making Fox the almost diametrical opposite.

Sure, both are divorced, but where Rebus repeatedly sticks his toe in the water Fox isn't up for emotional involvement. There are no children, he's shunted his elderly father off to an expensive retirement home and he's been keeping his sister at arms length due to a combination of her binge drinking and her taking up with an abusive Englishman. His Dad's not that keen on her partner, either, Fox wants Vince Faulkner charged, but sister Judith won't press charges.

Some of that distance comes as a result of Fox's status as a recovering alcoholic, though he's still inclined to visit the bars frequented by his colleagues, drinking Virgin rather than Bloody Marys but not far enough removed from his demons to escape fantasies about the taste of single-malt whisky and the burn of vodka in the back of the throat.

That brings us to the biggest difference between the two characters. While Rebus was quite happy to go off on his own, Fox is working in an environment where he and his colleagues are loathed by their peers and have to work as a team if they'e going to get anywhere.

It's the intrigue that looks to be the driving force behind what could, if the first volume's anything to go by, be a cracker of a series.

As the story starts, Fox has just completed what appears to have been a successful investigation of Glen Heaton, a popular and high-ranking officer,who has allegedly been on the take for years, bending the rules to his advantage and trading favours among a network of criminals while still seeming to maintain a n impressive success rate in his investigations.

On the surface, when the Child Exploitation and Online Protection investigators ask him to look into a possible pedophile, it seems fairly straightforward. Jamie Breck is a young officer on the way up, but his name and credit-card details have turned up in a child-pornography inquiry.

Fox sets about preliminary investigations, and we're shown how much his team's activities, which must, of course, be conducted in extreme secrecy, are disliked by their colleagues, and he's not far into the investigation when a phone call advises him that his sister's partner has been found dead.

The phone call, in an amazing coincidence comes from Jamie Breck, who happens to be stationed at Heaton's old station, where there are plenty of people who'd like to get square with Fox, who has an obvious motive for the killing though the reader's fairly sure he didn't do it.

This results in the rather tricky situation where you've got two blokes investigating each other (more or less) as circumstances seem to be conspiring to push them closer together and a tentative friendship threatens both careers.

Breck, as it turns out, isn't quite what he seems to be. Younger than Fox, upwardly mobile, with a sharp intelligence and a cynical awareness of the way things operate, the reader could see his relationship with a female officer as cover for pedophile activities, and his penchant for role playing computer games would probably register him as more than a tad sus, but as it turns out he's straight, and just as concerned as Fox to find out who's pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Before they know it, Fox and Breck are suspended, leaving them relatively free to work together to find out what's really going on and repair their lost reputations amid a fair bit of string-pulling in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, with failed property deals, abandoned building developments and investors (including major crime figures) who've lost a bundle, are looking to claw it back and will happily turn a blind eye to whatever's involved in doing so.

That situation, in itself, creates an interesting dilemma for Fox, a man who's used to working by the book, investigating carefully in collaboration with a team to build up a case that will then be passed on for review. In these circumstances he's forced to throw away the rule book, become proactive participant rather than a detached observer and cut a few corners.

All in all, after the relative disappointment of Doors Open, we've got a character who holds the attention, may be more subdued and controlled than the old Rebus (who's apparently retired and doing a bit of digging over old cold cases so he's not totally done for) but finds himself amidst connections, apparent coincidences and conflict of interest complications. He's a believable character, doing a nasty job that he takes seriously and wants to do well. It's a character, and a situation, that has definite potential when it comes to Rankin's preferred subject matter, the moral dimension and ethical issues involved with police work and the interactions between the police and the wider community.

Actually, the only thing that's keeping me from starting on The Impossible Dead is the knowledge that it'll be a while before I can get my hands on a sequel.