MARK Billingham may be a stand-up comedian but when it comes to crime writing, he is deadly serious.

His acclaimed novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne have catapulted him to the top of the British crime-writing league, winning plaudits from readers and fellow authors alike.

Lifeless (Time Warner, £12.99) is his fourth to feature the troubled police inspector, who is now at a crossroads in his life.

Depressed by the recent loss of his father and berated for seriously overstepping the mark on his last case, Thorne is encouraged to take "gardening leave".

But his attention is soon focused on a series of gruesome murders among London's homeless society. Three men sleeping rough have been murdered. Each victim has been kicked to death and had a £20 note pinned to his chest.

To try to find a link between the killings, Thorne goes undercover and lives among the capital's forgotten people. He discovers a link between the homeless victims and the perpetrators of a 15-year-old crime. But he is even more shocked when he's told that that the killer is a policeman.

Gritty, shocking and harrowing. Billingham never fails to impress.

The same could be said of Harlan Coben, an author guaranteed to make your pulse throb and the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention.

In common with Coben's other recent stand-alone suspense novels, Tell No One, No Second Chance and Gone For Good, The Innocent (Orion, £14.99) leads us into a world of secrets and lies.

It centres on Matt Hunter who, at the age of 20, tried to break up a fight outside a party and ended up accidentally killing someone. He was jailed for four years for manslaughter.

Now he is slowly trying to rebuild his life. He is working as a paralegal in his late brother's law firm, he is married to Olivia, the girl of his dreams, and they are about to have a baby. But soon his happy little world is turned inside out again.

Before his wife goes away on a business trip, Matt buys her a mobile video phone, so they can see each other while they chat. How sweet! What he doesn't expect is to receive images of Olivia in a blonde wig with another man. Matt is also being followed by an ex-con with a record for violence. But why? Who can Matt trust? And just who is this woman he has married?

This has so many twists and turns, your head will spin.

Fellow American James Patterson seems to churn out novels like there's no tomorrow. His latest, Fourth Of July (Headline, £17.99), is his fifth in 12 months.

Co-written by little-known New York journalist Maxine Paetro, Fourth Of July features San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club.

In a late-night showdown after a car chase, Boxer has to make an instantaneous decision. In self defence she fires her gun, kills a teenage girl and paralyses her brother. But her actions land her in trouble with the authorities and she must be put on trial.

To escape the media circus, Boxer retreats to the coastal town of Half Moon Bay.

Soon after her arrival, a string of grisly murders shatters the peaceful community. A key detail reminds Boxer of a case she worked on as a rookie ten years earlier. An unsolved murder that has haunted her ever since. Is there a link?

Patterson's trademark punchy chapters, propel you through the pages at breakneck speed. You will not be disappointed.

In recent years, John Connolly's writing has got darker and darker. His latest, Black Angel (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99), is the darkest of them all.

When Charlie Parker's friend Louis is told his cousin is missing presumed dead, Parker reluctantly leaves his partner and baby to investigate.

But what he finds is worst than he could ever have imagined. Bodies are being collected and crafted into strange sculptures, but that is only part of it.

Hundreds of years ago fragments of a vellum map were ripped up and distributed amount Europe's Cistercian monasteries. This was designed to confuse those looking for the Black Angel, a demon who had been sealed in a silver statue.

These fragments are being secretly collected, and once the map is assembled and the tomb found, the evil power of the Dark Angel will be let loose on the world. Or so a group called The Believers believes.

As Parker, Louis and his partner, Angel, track down the killers they are plunged into a terrifying world, one which they will struggle to get out of alive.

Creepy, classy and compelling, Connolly's gothic thriller puts Stephen King firmly in the shade.

Updated: 09:03 Saturday, June 04, 2005