MEL lives in a well-to-do Louisiana town, in Such A Good Wife by Seraphina Nova Glass (Titan, £8.99), with her kids, a fine husband and a nice house. She’s not exactly happy, but aware that she has nothing much to be unhappy about, so she shocks herself when she begins an affair with a local author after a writers’ group meeting.

She’s even more shocked to discover hidden within her a woman who is skilled at planning, executing and concealing deceit. When she’s caught up on the edges of a suspicious death, she begins to question whether there is anything she would be incapable of doing to get herself and her family out of danger.

You really won’t be able to put this down; it’s a tense thriller of personality rather than events.

Silver Pebbles (Bitter Lemon Press, £8.99) continues a wonderful series of 1990s crime novels by Swiss writer Hansjorg Schneider, now at last translated into elegant English by Mike Mitchell.

It’s set in Basel, where Inspector Peter Hunkeler spends his days hating being a cop, and increasingly convinced he’s on the wrong side. The case of a migrant worker who accidentally comes into an illegal fortune, however, does capture Hunkeler’s attention. Can he solve the case fast enough to save two innocent lives?

There’s a rare lack of ostentation in Schneider’s writing that highlights the drama of his narratives.

Simon Westow is a thief-taker in Leeds in the 1820s, making his living recovering stolen goods. In The Blood Covenant by Chris Nickson (Severn House, £20.99), his desire to force some sort of justice for two children, labourers in a mill who have been killed by their overseer’s disciplining, puts him on the wrong side of two of the city’s most powerful men. Westow’s enemies are rich enough to be beyond the law, and in the end only force and cunning may defeat them.

Depicting a time when working men are secretly forming “combinations,” the author of this atmospheric bloody historical thriller, and his protagonists, are on the right side of history.

My People (Gatekeeper Press, £13.74) is a stellar collection of stories by Liza Cody, one of crime fiction’s most original and acclaimed writers of the short form. The title piece is a characteristically unpredictable account of a young police officer tasked with infiltrating a group of climate change activists who are intent on bringing London to a standstill.

It’s no surprise that Shareen Manasseh, who has never felt herself to be amongst “my people” in the police service, finds herself identifying with those she’s supposed to be spying on, particularly following the sudden death of one of the protesters. But if the cynical cops aren’t Shareen’s true tribe, neither are the idealistic campaigners. For an outsider, assimilation can be a productive strategy, but it can also be a form of suicide.

It’s the seemingly effortless combination of wit and sadness that makes Cody’s work so satisfying and so revelatory.