Suspicious circumstances abound in the latest crime fiction

The old adage that everyone has a novel in them has a new version: anyone can write a thriller. Celebrity helps, of course, and Bill and Hillary Clinton are exemplars of the trend, though each has had the sense to draw on professional assistance and the grace to acknowledge it. Closer to home, Britain has spawned its own unexpected authors, led by Richard Osman with his astonishing successful The Thursday Murder Club.

Now Alan Johnson, the former Labour MP and cabinet minister, joins the club with The Late Train to Gipsy Hill (Headline, £16.99), his first foray into fiction. He arrives with impressive credentials, however, having published three excellent volumes of memoirs since leaving politics. Like them, this book is well written, if less affecting.

After a meeting in a Pimlico hotel, a Russian documentary maker named Smolnikov dies from a lethal dose of polonium that’s been administered to the wrong man’s coffee. From this startling opening, we’re introduced to a more placid protagonist, an unprepossessing young man called Gary Nelson. He’s in search of excitement that is proving elusive, both in his humdrum job and in the tepid evenings spent with flatmates in a Pooterish part of south London.

Then a chance encounter with a woman he has admired from afar transforms his life. Arina is a beautiful Ukrainian immigrant, and the hotel waitress who has accidentally poisoned Smolnikov. Pursued by vengeful thugs from the Russian mafia, she turns impulsively to Gary for help, and together they go on the run.

All this is deftly handled, and Johnson is good at capturing daily London life. The romance that develops between Gary and Arina has more than a whiff of schmaltz about it, but for the most part avoids descending into cloying ‘cutesy crime’.