2012 has been a particularly good year for psychological thrillers. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) is the brilliant, darkly comic tale of Amy Dunne, wife of Nick, who disappears just as the couple are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. The narration alternates between Nick and Amy, and it becomes increasingly clear that neither has been entirely honest with the other. The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh (John Murray) is the story of Jane, heavily pregnant and newly arrived in Berlin, where she becomes obsessed by a neighbour's treatment of his teenage daughter. A portrait of a city haunted by its past, with nods to Don't Look Now and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, it's a profoundly creepy read.
Attica Locke's second novel, The Cutting Season (Serpent's Tail), is just as compelling as her superb debut, Black Water Rising. It's set in Belle Vie, a restored Louisiana plantation house complete with slave quarters, which is available for weddings, parties, conferences and school trips during which children can watch local African Americans acting out a sanitised version of their forebears' lives. Proceedings are disrupted when manager Caren, herself a descendant of Belle Vie slaves, finds a woman's body on the premises. The Cutting Season is an unflinching examination of politics, race, the family and the stranglehold of the past.
Location also plays an important part in Tana French's latest novel, Broken Harbour (Hodder & Stoughton). In this case, it's an Irish ghost estate built during the boom years, now half-finished and almost uninhabited but for a family who are either dead or in intensive care. At first they appear to be casualties of the recession – the father going crazy after losing his job months earlier – but the reality, as a chilling tale of obsession and insanity unfolds, is a lot more frightening.
The eponymous woman at the heart of Cathi Unsworth's Weirdo (Serpent's Tail) was convicted, aged 15, of killing a classmate. Twenty years later, the case is being re-investigated, and parallel past and present narratives deal with families broken beyond any hope of repair. Classroom rivalries spiral from petty spitefulness to murder amid the clannish insularity and vested interests of coastal Norfolk: it's a wonderfully atmospheric read from an author who gets better with every book.
It's been a vintage year for murderous schoolgirls. Tanya Byrne's first novel, Heart-Shaped Bruise (Headline), purports to be the diary of Emily Koll, former inmate of a now-defunct prison psychiatric unit, who committed a terrible crime. Raw and very exciting, it's the perfect gift for a young adult.
DI John Rebus has been greatly missed since Ian Rankin retired him five years ago. He's back as a civilian consultant on cold case inquiries in Standing in Another Man's Grave (Orion), investigating a series of disappearances stretching back to the millennium. Fans of John le Carré who've been feeling bereft recently will undoubtedly appreciate Charles Cumming's latest spy thriller, A Foreign Country (HarperCollins). Named Scottish Crime Book of the Year, it also won an award for best thriller. Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville (Harvill Secker) is another one to look out for: this time, Inspector Jack Lennon investigates the stabbing of a Lithuanian people trafficker – dark, disturbing Belfast noir from an exceptionally talented author.
Finally, for those who enjoy foreign locations but are tiring of Scandinavia, Italian author Valerio Varesi's The Dark Valley (translated by Joseph Farrell, MacLehose Press), set in the Appenines and featuring the excellent Commissario Soneri, is a rich, rewarding read.
