The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell

Another brilliantly written thriller, even more so in that the reader is, towards the end, ahead of the detective becuase of his limitations: AZ: "Herbert Molin, a retired police officer, lives alone in a remote cottage in northern Sweden. Two things seem to consume him; his passion for the tango, and an obsession with the "demons" he believes to be pursuing him. Early one morning shots shatter Molin's windows...by the time his body is found it is almost unrecognisable. Stefan Lindman is another off-the-job police officer. On extended sick leave due to having cancer of the tongue, Lindman hears about the murder of his former colleague and, in a bid to take his mind off his own problems, decides to investigate. As his investigation becomes increasingly complex, it is with both horror and disbelief that Lindman uncovers links to a global web of neo-Nazi activity."

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Another one recommended by Penguin Books as part of their year long challenge. Entertaining and interesting, brought home to me how lucky we are in our current lives, without struggle for food and warmth and with such choice. An interesting mystery set during the devastation of the Plague, lots of new information I never knew

Change of Heart by Jodie Picoult

AZ: "June's first husband was killed in a car crash. Against all the odds, her daughter was uninjured and, in another miracle, June found love again with the policeman who rescued them. Six years on they are a happy family, June pregnant with their own child. But now June's second daughter is dying without the new heart she so urgently needs. And her first daughter, along with her husband, is dead, killed by Shay Bourne, an itinerant workman they welcomed into their home. The crime was so heinous that Shay has been given the death penalty for the first time in 69 years in New Hampshire. Shay is going to die, and he is looking for redemption. He wants to give June's daughter his heart . . ."

A man receives the death penalty for murdering a little girl and her stepfather. There is no question whether or not he did it so, knowing Picoult, the heart of the matter must be elsewhere. The murderer has no previous history of violence and after his death he wants his heart to be given to the surviving daughter, the murdered girl's half sister who was in utero when her father and sister were murdered. Stranger occurances begin taking place in the prison and the reader is as torn between faith and scepticism as the characters. When we are made aware of Shay's past of taking the blame for actions such as previous arson and murder it begins to dawn on the rader and other characters whey and how the murders took place.

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz - brilliant as ever and always

AZ: "After a day's work hefting brick and stone, Tim Carrier slakes his thirst at The Lamplighter Tavern. Nothing heavy happens there. It's a friendly workingman's bar run by his good friend Rooney, who enjoys gathering eccentric customers. Working his deadpan humour on strangers is, for Tim, all part of the entertainment. But how could Tim have imagined that the stranger who sits down next to him one evening is about to unmake his world and enmesh him in a web of murder and deceit? The man has come there to meet someone and he thinks it's Tim. Tim's wayward sense of humour lets the misconception stand for a moment and that's all it takes: the stranger hands Tim a fat manila envelope, saying, 'Half of it's there; the rest when she's gone,' and then he's out the door. In the envelope Tim finds the photograph of a woman, her name and address written on the back; and several thick packets of hundred-dollar bills. When an intense-looking man sits down where the first stranger sat and glances at the manila envelope, Tim knows he's the one who was supposed to get it.Shaken, thinking fast, Tim says he's had a change of heart. He removes the picture of the woman and then hands the envelope to the stranger. 'Half what we agreed,' he says. 'For doing nothing. Call it a no-kill fee.' Tim is left holding a photo of a pretty woman, but his sense of fun has led him into a very dangerous world from which there is no way back. The company of strangers has cost him his peace of mind, and possibly his life."

The Scold's Bridle by Minette Walters

"Dr. Sarah Blakeney, the physician who's attended caustic Mathilda Gillespie for the past year, is shaken when her patient is found dead in her bathtub, doped with liquor and barbiturates, wrists slit, and an elaborate cast-iron gag, the scold's bridle, carefully arrayed with flowers and clasped over her face. But Sarah, unhappy in her own domestic life with her husband, Jack, a brilliant, unsuccessful painter, has no idea how close to home this calamity will strike. When Sarah tells Jack she wants a divorce, genre-wise readers will settle back in anticipation of a running analogy between Mathilda's savagely miserable life - she was impregnated by her idiot uncle when she was 13 - and Sarah's present woes. They're in for as big a shock as Sarah when a videotaped last-minute will names her as sole legatee at the expense of Mathilda's beautiful, parasitical daughter, Joanna Lascelles, and her sulky, thieving granddaughter, Ruth. Suddenly the police are cordially interested in Sarah, the Lascelleses coolly enraged at her, charming Jack (who's gone to stay with Joanna while he paints her portrait) a mass of outrageous contradictions, and Mathilda desperately enigmatic. As all the principals begin sensitively, articulately, to torment themselves and each other with their guilty suspicions, Walters (The Sculptress, 1993, etc.) draws out the complications with a master's hand until the monstrous pattern is completed with a final sickening jolt"

Panic by Jeff Abbott

AZ: "Things are going well for young film-maker Evan Casher - until he receives an urgent phonecall from his mother, summoning him home. He arrives to find her brutally murdered body on the kitchen floor and a hitman lying in wait for him. It is then he realises his whole life has been a lie. His parents are not who he thought they were, his girlfriend is not who he thought she was, his entire existence an ingeniously constructed sham. And now that he knows it, he is in terrible danger. So he is catapulted into a violent world of mercenaries, spies and terrorists. Pursued by a ruthless band of killers who will stop at nothing to keep old secrets buried, Evan's only hope for survival is to discover the truth behind his past."

Cracking good read as fast as possible book about a man who discovers his parents are living secret lives. Convincing and involving.