In 2014, in a sleazy part of South Central LA, sex workers are being murdered, and pint-sized Latina cop Essie Perry believes that the deaths are the work of an unknown serial killer who murdered 13 women in 1999. In These Women (Faber, £8.99), Ivy Pochoda casts the net wider still, focusing on individuals whose lives are affected by the actions of a single criminal.

The shift in focus away from serial killers and on to their victims is a welcome trend in both true crime and crime fiction. The local police don’t regard 19-year-old Brendan’s disappearance as suspicious, and the villagers are tight-lipped on the subject … The pace of Cal’s investigation takes a while to pick up, and most of the action is in the final third of the book, but as well as containing strong characters, beautiful descriptions and some genuinely eerie moments, The Searcher poses uncomfortable questions about morality, retribution and masculinity. Divorced, and missing his now grown-up daughter, Cal finds himself drawn to Trey and gets involved even though, without the necessary authority and tools of the trade, he is out on a limb. His days are largely taken up with renovations, trying to understand the local customs and responding cautiously to inquiries about his marital status, when a scruffy local kid who has taken to hanging around his property asks for help in finding a vanished older sibling. American Cal Hooper, formerly of the Chicago PD, has bought himself a fixer-upper in a remote village in the west of Ireland with the intention of settling down to a quiet life. Author of the Dublin Murder Squad series Tana French has described her second standalone, The Searcher(Viking, £14.99), as her take on a western, and the lone stranger who rides into town to right wrongs and generally disrupt the place is a classic Frontier-era theme.

The searcher book review