I SUPPOSE the definition of a liberal in 2026 is someone who looks at what’s happening in the United States, tuts, and then goes back to worrying about Russia.

Not that I want to put you off reading Quite Ugly One Evening (Abacus, £22), which sees the triumphant return of Chris Brookmyre’s most popular character, investigative journalist Jack Parlabane. This time, he’s investigating murder during a fan convention on a cruise ship where the culture war is literally inescapable. It’s properly plotted, wryly observed, and the evolving characterisation of Parablane in particular has a rare depth and subtlety.

But there are also clunking moments when centrist rage seizes the page. A character explaining that the Russians achieved Brexit by taking over the Tory Party; an overheard Leaver eternally ashamed at being fooled (the belief that us thickos all regret voting Leave is to the liberal creed what the resurrection of Jesus is to Catholicism).

Still a good read, but.

When the very first page of A Degree of Murder by Maz Evans (Headline, £20) made me laugh out loud several times I thought we might be in for something special, and I was right.

It centres on two disastrous gatherings taking place 25 years apart, but featuring the same guests, at one of Britain’s last private universities, a haunt of thick rich kids and unambitious academics. And killers, as it turns out.

The storylines are as strong as the comedy, the result a pure delight.

In the Deep South of the US, in Holy F*ck by Joseph Incardona (Bitter Lemon, £9.99), a young woman discovers she has the power to perform miracles. The Vatican is delighted until they realise how she does it: Stella cures men of incurable maladies by having sex with them for money.

Fearing this would undermine centuries of church teachings, Rome decides there is only one solution. A living prostitute saint is a disaster; a martyr, on the other hand, is something the cardinals can work with. The task is handed to the Bronski twins, the most ruthless and efficient team of hit men in “the great, dying land of America.”

This satirical thriller is funny, cheeky and bloody, but it’s also more surprising than that. By giving us the most cynical set-up imaginable, and then writing it paradoxically with compassion and hope, the Swiss author has created something bizarrely uplifting, a pleasure to read, and a small masterpiece of positivity.

The 1942 serial killer who murdered women in London during the wartime blackouts has often been fictionalised, but perhaps never from such an original and daring angle as in Susan Barrett’s All Cats Are Grey (Bathwick Hill, £8.99).

She follows four apparently ordinary people in a superbly rendered city living under the terrors and privations of Blitz bombing, rationing and social disorder. We also experience their backstories to understand how they come to cross paths with the killer — and even to have something in common with him.