POLICE start panicking when murder victim Elizabeth walks up to a cop in Cumbria and declares herself alive in Black Summer by MW Craven (Constable, £7.99). The man convicted of her killing, an egomaniacal celebrity chef, has already spent six years inside.

DS Washington Poe of the Serious Crimes Analysis Section is horrified, and not just because he might have been involved in a miscarriage of justice. His greater worry is his absolute certainty that chef Keaton is a ruthless, intelligent killer.

The DNA test doesn’t leave any room for doubt that Elizabeth is who she claims to be. But, whatever the lab says, Poe knows that Keaton is up to something. An impossible crime has taken place and, unless Poe and his colleagues can prove it within a few days, the evidence will be gone forever.

Craven has devised the best pure mystery plot of the year, a delightfully chewy puzzle which keeps its flavour through every page. To present it, he has one of the most enjoyable detective teams since Reginald Hill’s heyday.

Katie used to be a child star on US television and now, in her late 20s, all she is is an ex-child star. When websites ask:"Whatever became of her?" the answer is nothing much — and none of it good.

Perhaps a transformative therapy retreat, accompanied by her two oldest friends and her brother's New Age fiancee, will fix her? As it turns out, in The Retreat by Sherri Smith (Titan, £7.99), it's more likely to kill her.

One of the best fun thrillers of the year but at the same time sinister enough to create real shocks.

I caught up with a classic this autumn, after picking up a second-hand copy of one of the most celebrated of all country-house whodunnits.

First published in 1951, Cyril Hare’s An English Murder (Faber & Faber, £8.99) took all the trappings of the inter-war murder story but set it in the new Britain of egalitarianism, the welfare state and a working-class which no longer knows its place.

Thus the guests assembled for Christmas at Warbeck Hall include the leader of a revived fascist movement, an aristocratic but nominally socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer and a refugee historian, partly Jewish and partly communist, who is wholly “below the salt.”

The stately home itself is crumbling, with its owners expecting any moment to be dispossessed by the unstoppable march of the socialists. And now it’s cut off from the world by a snow storm. And there’s a body in the drawing-room.

For a particular reason which I will attempt not to hint at, so as not to give anything away, I feel that most Morning Star readers will be able to work out the motive for the murder sooner than the average crime fan.

But that didn’t spoil my pleasure at all. The writing is crisp, the plot clever and the satire spot-on.