Imagine the guilt and fear you would have to live with if, while you slept, your sibling were abducted from your shared bedroom. Protagonist Julia Gooden has lived with those feelings for 30 years. She was only 7 when her brother was kidnapped, and can’t remember anything from that night other than not locking the outside door because she didn’t want her brother to think she was a baby. The daughter of an alcoholic mother and a grifter father, she lost her only anchor with her brother’s snatching.

Now a crime beat reporter, Julia calls the investigating officer on the anniversary of her brother’s unsolved disappearance to see if anything has surfaced. He responds kindly, showing his concern for her mental health, but has no new leads. Obsessive and fearful, Julia is abnormally overprotective of her own children, ages 2 and 9, and her marriage is strained to its breaking point.

The horrific kidnapping of Julia’s 2-year-old reignites her feelings of helplessness. But this time, Julia doesn’t give up; as a journalist, she is in a position to investigate her son’s situation. Her emotions are running high as she tries to determine if the kidnapping of her child is related to her brother’s, or if it’s merely a random, unfair coincidence. While many facts makes a plausible case the kidnappings are connected, there is enough mystery and second-guessing in The Last Time She Saw Him to satisfy diehard suspense readers.

Journalist Jane Haseldine’s debut novel rings with authenticity as she, like Julia, is a former crime reporter. This is a harrowing read.

Lately it seems that each new crime debut must include some idiosyncrasy—the detective must have a quirk that sets him or her apart from the many crime solvers populating the suspense genre. They’re overeaters, opera lovers, poets, phobics, depressives or wise guys. Debut author David Swinson goes one step further, presenting his antihero, former cop and current part-time PI Frank Marr, as effectively part of the problem of drug-related crime he’s often out there solving.

In The Second Girl, Swinson makes sure we know only too clearly how Marr’s own drug addiction affects his day-to-day; how it can cloud the faculties and hold judgments hostage to the need for the next fix and a consistent resupply. Marr’s secret is a heavy one, though he stays away from crack and heroin, sticking to powder cocaine, pills and booze. But he’s constantly at risk of discovery by colleagues and friends. The only person who knows of his addiction is his former deputy chief, who forced the detective’s “early retirement” but left his record clean, due to both the fragility and success of the many cases Marr successfully resolved.

Marr has been on a days-long stakeout at the house of a D.C. drug gang. Only thing is, he’s hoping to score drugs for his own use on the sly. Instead, complications present as he searches the house and discovers a teenage girl, abducted and held captive. In the wake of the publicity Marr receives following her rescue, he gets tapped to help some former police colleagues search for another missing teen. He reluctantly agrees, walking an even more precarious line of possible discovery.

Readers learn in detail what it’s like to plan one’s whole life around scoring that next hit, maintaining a level of personal control and evading discovery. Just as lying and subterfuge are part of the world of crime Marr investigates, they are equally part of his own daily grind.

The crime story in The Second Girl is itself mildly interesting, and it’s clear that this detective doesn’t play by any rule book. He’s alternately clever, intuitive and violent in his pursuit of these street criminals. It’s Marr’s addiction and its effects on his life that take center stage here, and they’re given first-person immediacy in this fast-moving yet still introspective narrative. It’s often nerve-wracking, sometimes gruesome, but in the end carries a note of wearying sameness throughout.

Homicide detective Elouise “Lou” Norton is enjoying a lunch date at Johnny’s Pastrami with hunky Assistant DA Sam Seward when she gets a phone call. Her partner, Colin Taggert, calls her to a murder scene, where a body has been discovered lying in a wooded park outside of Los Angeles. The victim is a young teenage girl, which seems to fit with a recent pattern of crime in the LA area, except that the other girls in question are still missing and presumed kidnapped. This one is definitely dead.

The gruesome murder provides a fast-paced kickoff for Trail of Echoes, author Rachel Howzell Hall’s tense exploration of murder in a down-and-out LA neighborhood, and her third thriller after Land of Shadows and Skies of Ash. Hall pens an in-depth, believable portrait of the series’ black, female detective Norton, and it’s filled with realistic and whip-smart dialogue matched with tight, visceral descriptions of local scenes.

Norton and Taggert set off to inform the young victim’s mother of the tragedy, and the address turns out to be the same apartment building where Lou grew up. Like the homicide detective herself, the 13-year-old victim, Chanita, seemed to have been on a path that held the promise of escape from the gray, distressed area of housing projects where she lived. Norton finds the family apartment filled with Chanita’s expressive photographs, along with awards and citations honoring her young talent. This matches a framework common among the recent disappearances—they’re adolescents with talent and promise, all missing from the same LA neighborhood and school district, all close in age and race.

The detective and her team cast a wide net, uncovering several persons of interest: a neighborhood tough named Ontrel who claimed to be her protector; a Mexican dude named Raul Moriaga, who lives downstairs; her photography teacher and mentor, Payton Bishop; and even a selection of her mom’s old boyfriends. Important clues to identifying the murderer’s identity include the strange photograph of a flowering plant found in the victim’s bedroom and a series of creepy coded messages left anonymously for Detective Norton, including an odd statue or two posed on the hood of her car.

Full of toe-tapping, fidgety energy that’s tamped down and ready to brim over at any moment, Trail of Echoes offers an addictive read from a promising new author.

Rain Dogs, the fifth in Adrian McKinty’s Detective Sean Duffy crime series, glows with luminous portraits and firmly anchored scenes. Readers don’t have to search for some kernel of illumination in what the author is saying—it’s there in plain sight, a welcome change from many of the overstuffed tomes of the current day. There’s barely a wasted word, and actions are never belabored—the phone never rings, you just get “Briiinnnggg.” Yet the book contains everything for the crime enthusiast, including a locked room (or should I say, castle), a brisk procedural, mystery with a noir look and great dialogue. It’s all set smack in the midst of the “Troubles” in 1980s Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Early one morning, a young journalist named Lily Bigelow is found dead beneath a high parapet inside the walls of the Anglo-Norman Carrickfergus castle, a tourist venue just outside Belfast. Search after search of the courtyard, dungeons and battlements appears to show that no one (unless it was the night watchman) could have killed her, though there appears to be no reason why she’d jump to her death.

Detective Duffy painstakingly retraces Lily’s tracks leading up to her death, delving into her recent conversations with fellow journalists and her assignment accompanying a Finnish trade mission to Northern Ireland as they decide whether to open a business in the Belfast area. Duffy is closely accompanied by Detective Constable Lawson, a cheeky, dead-smart lad full of dry observations—the perfect counterpoint to Duffy, who often wonders if the joke’s on him. Duffy is a flawed, vulnerable Irishman, 40-ish and struggling to convince himself—or maybe us—that his just-under-30 girlfriend isn’t too young for him. He’s fun and down to earth, and he talks to the reader in abbreviated sentences, so we’re drawn right into the snap of the book’s dialogue.

Pointedly, McKinty makes us aware of the daily dangers in Northern Ireland, as Duffy checks his car for bombs before each trip. The tragic murder of one of his colleagues is expressed simply, with stark effect. On the other hand, Duffy is full of humorous asides about his colleagues: “I said hey to some grizzled old cops who looked like rejects from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.”

McKinty’s writing is so good it makes your head spin, and Rain Dogs has it all: intriguing plot, good Irish humor and a straightforward telling.