The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Heights by Ian Rankin; The Mortons by Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier; Murder Most Cryptic by Alys Cummings; The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald by AJ West; Inheritance by Gillian SlovoThe Heights by Ian Rankin (Orion, £25) Luxury tower blocks, those potent symbols of hyper-gentrification, the increasing wealth gap and the displacement of existing communities, are a gift to novelists. Rankin’s first standalone thriller in almost two decades centres on The Heights, 18 storeys high and facing London’s Hyde Park, where DS Gillian Gish is investigating the suspicious death of night-shift security guard Dwayne Hogarth. The high-net-worth individuals who live there, including a young singer, a gangster’s wife, a man who “made a mint in post-glasnost Russia” and the daughter of a very well-connected Zimbabwean, are either uncontactable or tight-lipped, and it soon becomes clear that the developer, despite his bravado, is in financial trouble. Everyone, it appears, has something to hide – and then a second corpse is discovered. Rankin is a superb storyteller, and this is well up to his usual high standard, while DS Gish – less complex, but considerably more relatable…

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