WEALTHY businessman Reijiro gathers his family together for a seasonal celebration — and to torment them as he constantly changes the terms of his will according to his whims — in The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa (Pushkin Vertigo, £14.99).

But this modern Japanese variant on Hercule Poirot’s Christmas involves an unusual complication. One of the old man’s grandchildren, high school student Hisataro, suffers in secret from an unexplained malady: every now and then he repeats a single day eight times. Being stuck in a temporary time loop is usually a bore, but when it coincides with your grandad’s murder it does give you several goes at preventing a tragedy.

The teen protagonist is a delight, irresistibly reminding British readers of Adrian Mole, while the last twist revealed in the denouement is so clever, and so apposite.

At college 15 years ago Lizzie and Bex were best mates, in Everyone Is Lying To You by Jo Piazza (HQ, £18.99). Then something horrible happened, and now magazine writer Lizzie watches trad-wife influencer “Rebecca” on social media, smugly raising her children and honouring her husband on an idyllic ranch miles from anywhere in a US desert state.

Can that really be the same woman who proudly wore a “Slutty Bex” T-shirt when they were students? Lizzie is about to find out, as her old friend unexpectedly offers her the kind of exclusive that a print journalist working in a dying industry can’t resist. She promises all will be revealed at MomBomb, a convention for conservative female influencers. That falls through when police arrive to interview Rebecca about a murder, and she’s vanished.

This is a wild ride — a savage lampoon of right-wing social media and a merrily crazed thriller.

Another cub reporter looking for a break is at the centre of The Magus Of Sicily (Constable, £22). Having previously introduced readers to the hidden life of Venice in his Nathan Sutherland series, Philip Gwynne Jones now invites us to Aci Trezza, where the suspicious death of a self-styled psychic offers young journalist Nedda her chance.

She longs to move from reviewing cake shops (admittedly, a serious beat in Sicily) to following in her late mother’s footsteps, her stories appearing on the “cronaca nera” — the crime pages. Meanwhile, a stage magician and debunker of magic who calls himself the Magus has more reasons than one to fear a knock on the door, from police, press or worse.

If you enjoy Italy, either in reality or imagination, you couldn’t help but enjoy Jones’s books.

Existing readers of MW Craven’s thrillers featuring odd-couple investigators Tilly Bradshaw and Washington Poe will need no urging to grab the latest, The Final Vow (Constable, £20). In this instalment an apparently random, and flawlessly efficient, sniper has imposed a panicked lockdown on Britain. But is he a mere serial killer or something even more wicked?

It’s very much Craven’s recipe-as-before — and so it should be, because it’s unimprovable.