Crime books of the year

Octogenarian Joseph Wambaugh shows no sign of needing a blue pill in Hollywood Hills (Corvus, £16.99). The fourth instalment of his cop saga focuses on Flotsam and Jetsam, the righteous pair of surfer dudes, and it comes as a real shock when something nasty happens to the latter. This time the bad guys include a British gallery owner, a house full of Addams Family wannabes and the ever-elusive Wedgie Bandit. The corkscrew plot combines comedy and horror in equal measure and the anecdotes, which often have the ring of truth, are as plentiful as ever.

Carl Hiaasen has long since given up trying to shock: everything in his Day-Glo Florida is played for laughs. His anger at the way humans behave - and the way they treat the environment - has modulated into appalled amusement. Star Island (Sphere, £14.99) is an almost affectionate skewering of celebrity culture featuring a little monster called Cherry Pye, whose gargantuan appetite for drugs has almost broken the bank and put her forthcoming Skantily Klad tour in jeopardy. A kidnap plot enables Hiaasen to exhume two of his most famous creations: Skink, a former state governor who lives rough in the Everglades, and the pizza-faced Chemo, who has a weed-whacker in place of an arm.

A torturer who thinks he's a werewolf is the prime villain in The Sentry (Orion, £9.99), the latest Pike & Cole novel from Robert Crais. Joe Pike makes the mistake of falling for a female victim who turns out to be under surveillance by the FBI. The harsh Californian sun casts deep shadows on their road to perdition and the final 100 pages - in which horrid truths are revealed - are as exciting as anything Crais has ever written. Don't be surprised if the werewolf howls again.

The Fifth Witness (Orion, £18.99) by Michael Connelly is the best book thus far to feature Mickey Haller, a lawyer who prefers to work out of the back of his car. His first foreclosure case is a humdinger: a woman who has been badmouthing the CEO of the bank that wants to sell her home is arrested when he is found with his brains bashed out. The trial is a veritable rollercoaster, full of lurches, which not only makes for a clever thriller but is also a heartfelt examination of the difference between natural justice and the law.

George Pelecanos introduces a new protagonist, Spero Lucas, in The Cut (Orion, £12.99). The 29-year-old veteran of the war in Iraq has no trouble getting girls to fall into his bed but he is troubled by the premature death of his adoptive father. Now working as a private investigator, he agrees to trace two missing consignments of marijuana for a jailed drug dealer. The skills learned in the alleyways of Fallujah soon prove more than useful. Pelecanos's economical style matches the self-containment of his hero: both exude a sense of barely suppressed energy. The brooding, bloody result makes you eager to make the reacquaintance of the pensive PI.

Finally, to ensure the Yanks don't have all the kudos, Lee Child - a Brit, admittedly, who has done his best to become an American - is on brilliant form in The Affair (Bantam, £18.99).

Looping back in time to 1997 when Jack Reacher was still a major in the military police, this prequel has the avenging angel investigating a series of murders in "the armpit of Mississippi".

It is by no means a typical Reacher adventure - for a start he narrates the story himself - but for sheer page-turning ability it's unbeatable.