Death Writ Large by Susie Dent (Zaffre £20, 416pp)

This second outing for the perspicacious Oxford lexicographer Martha Thornhill is every bit as gripping as her debut, Guilty By Definition, last year.

Here she finds a set of suspicious runes inscribed on a church wall where an acclaimed academic has apparently killed himself by jumping from the tower.

Martha is suspicious – and she, together with her dictionary-editing colleagues, starts to examine what the cryptic message means.

So begins this delightfully old-fashioned murder mystery, centred on the writings of a controversial Oxford author who was obsessed with puzzles, and who had a group of undergraduate disciples called the Cabal. Written by TV and podcast wordsmith Dent, it is packed with intriguing details, while never failing to entertain. Richard Osman had better watch out.

The Burning Fears by Katy Massey (Sphere £10.99, 288pp)

Making a Leeds brothel keeper and a washed-up detective the protagonists of a crime drama is a brave move, but one which won Massey a first novel award with her debut All Us Sinners last year, and here they return.

It is now February 1982, five years later. The Yorkshire Ripper has been caught, but Peter Sutcliffe’s shadow still hangs over the city, as does the stench of corruption.

Former sex worker Lynda is killed in a hit and run as she tries to attract the attention of Maureen, head of Leeds’ most respected ‘sauna’. On the surface it looks like an accident, but was it? Meanwhile, DS Mick Hunniford is investigating the blackmail of a wealthy local MP. Are they connected?

Vivid atmosphere, great dialogue and a gritty, tightly wound plot confirm Massey as a star of the future.

The Butcher Legacy by Alaina Urquhart (Constable £25, 384pp)

New Orleans serial killer, Jeremy Rose, also known as the Bayou Butcher, is finally behind bars – put there by his nemesis, pathologist Dr Wren Muller – though not before he had killed her beloved husband.

But even in jail he casts a dreadful shadow. Rose is the most frightening incarcerated prisoner since Hannibal Lecter. Then, in the run-up to Halloween, young girls go missing, their bodies discovered with mutilations that are the hallmarks of the Butcher’s killings. Did he have an accomplice who has taken over?

Muller and her ally, Detective John Leroux, suspect so and begin a search that leads them to saintly pastor Philip Trudeau. Utterly compelling, this is crime at its most hypnotic.