CABARET MACABRE by Tom Mead (Head of Zeus, £20) continues the 1930s-set adventures of stage illusionist turned amateur sleuth, Joseph Spector, and Inspector Flint of the Yard. This time they are each approached separately by two sides of a deadly vendetta. The wife of a notorious hanging judge wants Spector to investigate threats on his life, while the sister of a man detained in a lunatic asylum for a previous assault on M'lud tries to convince the inspector that the judge is planning a murder.

Working together, the two friends must solve a series of impossible crimes and locked-room mysteries to get at the truth — which inevitably is to be found in a country house, cut off from the world by a snowstorm.

As long as Mead can keep coming up with ideas for these fun, atmospheric stories, I'll keep reading them. 

There's more fun in Death By Numbers by Jo Cunningham (Constable, £20), which introduces Una, who works as an actuary for an insurance company, and knows the precise risk of just about every activity or lifestyle choice. She's up for a promotion, which risks being derailed by a blip in the figures in her current project. Far more elderly people in seaside towns are dying in accidents than predicted by her model. 

Although Una doesn't really get humans — she's much more comfortable amid the sensible predictability of numbers — to save her career she sets off for Eastbourne to find out what's going on. Before long, she gets a nasty suspicion that the excess accidents may not be entirely accidental. It's an impressive debut full of unusual ideas and amusing relationships.

On the verge of announcing the greatest breakthrough ever in cancer research, a London-based scientist is murdered, in Deadly Protocol by Roger Corke (Diamond Crime, £10.99). The colleague who ill-advisedly spent the night with him now makes another big mistake. In a panic, she wipes her fingerprints off every surface and flees the scene. What she doesn't know is that Professor Stone wasn't, as everyone assumes, killed by racist thugs, but by people far more ruthless, organised and dangerous. And now they're tidying up loose ends.

This pacey debut novel by a veteran TV journalist features attractive protagonists, and that rare thing in crime fiction — realistic news media scenes!

A thoroughly odd novel, in the best way, is Louise Swanson's Lights Out (Hodder, £20), in which the British government responds to the energy crisis by switching off the nation's electricity between 8pm and breakfast. For Humberside hospice worker, Grace, the black nights are a particular torment because a childhood trauma left her terrified of darkness. Her nightmare gets worse when she wakes up to find that someone has been in her house while she slept. 

Grace's story never goes quite where you think it will. The reader fumbles around in the blackout, tripping over familiar items of crime fiction furniture, but when the lights come back up we seem to be in a different place altogether.