Recent crime fiction | 29 September 2016

There are two people in a prison cell: Frank and Hal. One of them is a member of a spy ring planning a terrorist act; the other is a police agent planted there to befriend the spy, and gather information on the terrorist cell. But the reader doesn’t know which is the cop, and which the criminal. This is the brilliant conundrum at the heart of Frédéric Dard’s The Wicked Go to Hell (Pushkin Vertigo, £7.99). The relationship between the two men moves from mutual loathing, suspicion and violence, to a begrudging partnership, to friendship, then to suspicion once more. Even after they escape prison together and go on the run, the fragile relationship continues: ‘Hatred like ours… is stronger than just affection, it goes much deeper!’

This French novella, first published in 1956, is a beguiling if slightly awkward mix of tragedy and farce, gunplay and broad humour. And the fact that the supposed good guys are happy to use physical torture only adds to the ambiguous moral nature of the plot. It’s a game of cat and mouse where cat and mouse are both wearing masks: claustrophobic, paranoid in the extreme, and very entertaining. A tough-guy version of Kafka.

Thomas Mullen’s Darktown (Little, Brown, £14.99) is influenced by true events. In 1948 an African-American police force was created in Atlanta, Georgia. Consisting of just eight men, the force had limited powers; the officers couldn’t make arrests and patrolled only the poor black neighbourhoods. The plot follows two of these officers, Boggs and Smith, as they track down the murderer of a young black woman. This is the deep South only 85 years after the end of slavery, and everybody seems to be against the duo: racist cops, corrupt politicians, even their own boss.