KISS HER GOODBYE
by Allan Guthrie
Polygon, £8.99; 224pp

HAVANA BLACK
by Leonard Padura
Bitter Lemon, £9.99; 286pp

JOHN HARVEY’S ROLL continues; no-one in Britain is writing better crime fiction. Darkness and Light is the third outing for Frank Elder, again recalled from his Cornish retirement to help to solve a crime in his former patch, Nottingham. (If the series carries on much longer, Harvey may run of excuses to keep yo-yoing the former cop out of seclusion.) This time, his former wife asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend’s sister, a quiet middle-aged woman of impeccable respectability. As Elder pursues his discreet inquiries, the woman’s body is discovered, lying apparently peacefully on her bed fully dressed, her clothing respectfully arranged.

For the former inspector, this is more than just another murder. It brings back the memory of one of his greatest failures, eight years before, in his first case with the Serious Crimes Unit — the murder of another woman of the same age, her body laid out in the same way. The killer was never caught. Elder, with the blessing of the local force, re-opens the case, seeking links with the new crime.

Allan Guthrie’s second novel, Kiss Her Goodbye, may be set in Edinburgh but the mood is hard American. The label “Scots noir” is wholly appropriate. Guthrie writes with an urgency, energy, cynical realism and mastery of casual violence that is rarely encountered in British crime writing.

Just as Ian Rankin showed us an Edinburgh far from its prim façade, Guthrie provides yet another, even murkier and sadder level of the city, but one alive with sparkling dialogue and constant restless activity.

Kiss Her Goodbye sees this world from the point of view of Joe Hope, employed by a loan shark to persuade — with the help of a baseball bat — recalcitrant debtors to meet their commitments. His depressed teenage daughter has apparently committed suicide and his wife, with whom he has many unresolved issues, is killed with a baseball bat. Arrested for murder, Hope embarks upon proving his innocence and dispensing punishment to those responsible for the deaths.

Havana Black, by Leonardo Padura, the second Lieutenant Mario Conde novel to be translated into English — by Peter Bush — is more complex than the usual crime story set in an exotic location.

Padura is intent on telling us a great deal about Cuban life, politics, society, culture and recent history, which he does with elegance and charm. There is a tendency to wordiness but don’t be put off. The extra effort is worth it.

Conde is a splendidly flawed character, macho and sensitive, a lover of music and literature, disenchanted with his homeland yet wholly committed to it. In Havana Black he investigates the brutal battering of a man who was once responsible for confiscating art works owned by rich Cubans who opposed the revolution.

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