A choice of recent thrillers | 30 March 2017

A young Norwegian police officer finds a rusting vintage car inside a locked and disused barn, and the presence of bullet holes in the bodywork intrigues him enough to start an investigation in his spare time. This is the central puzzle of Jorn Lier Horst’s When It Grows Dark (Sandstone Press, £7.99), and it offers a perfect introduction to his Detective Wisting series. Who owned the vehicle? Why was it abandoned? Was somebody murdered in the car? This is a case without a corpse, without suspects, and Wisting has to piece it together from the tiniest scraps of information, uncovering secrets and emotions kept hidden for decades.

He can ill afford the time: his wife has just given birth to twins, and he tries his best to help around the house. The two impulses drive him equally. Wisting emerges as a true detective, and a very humane presence. He learns about a missing person, and a missing fortune. The burden of the past weighs on the family who once owned the car, as a long-forgotten crime comes to light. Wisting takes on this burden, but is he helping the family or simply stirring up memories that are best left buried? This was my first taste of Horst’s subtle but engaging work and it really made me want to read more of his books.

Kate Hamer’s The Doll Funeral (Faber, £12.99) is set in 1983 and starts with 13-year-old Ruby finding out that she’s adopted: straight off she runs into the garden, singing for joy. This unexpected opening propels Ruby on a hunt to find her real parents. This is a strange book, a mixture of coming-of- age novel and fantasy thriller. Nearly every sentence is veined with imagery and it gets a bit much eventually.