A series of men who seem to have nothing in common are brutally killed-one is impaled, another starved and then strangled. We know more than the police-we know that the killer is a woman and we gradually understand some of her motivation; her much wronged mother was murdered almost by chance in a North African country-but we don't know who she is, or, for a while at least, her motives and principles of selection of her victims. Inspector Wallender finds himself investigating the case-two missing person enquiries that turn into a murder hunt-and finds himself endlessly confused by red herrings and side issues; a set of leads concerning mercenaries in the Congo of the 1960s turn out to have little to do with the case and Wallender has to waste considerable time suppressing an attempt by the far Right to turn the murders into a reason to set up vigilante justice. The Fifth Woman is a stylish police procedural which lets us see not only the leg work of investigation but also the diligence which makes effective murder possible-the killer Wallender is trying to catch is at least as good at her job of murder as he is at his of prevention. -Roz Kaveney.

Matthew Reilly's Area 7 shows an even more concentrated skill at keeping us turning the pages than his previous bestsellers Ice Station and Temple. He knows just the kind of book he wants to write, and he's repeatedly said that the key agenda behind his kinetic thrillers is to keep the reader's pulse quickened throughout. In Area 7 America's most secret base is the eponymous Area 7, and hidden deep in the Utah desert, this high-tech Air Force installation is visited by very few unauthorised personnel. But when the President of the United States pays a call, he encounters a nasty surprise: a hostile force is waiting inside. And as mayhem erupts, Schofield, a young marine in the President's entourage, finds himself obliged to live up to his reputation: that he's a good man in a storm. Reilly's speciality is the steady accumulation of cliffhanging situations (as he demonstrated so readily in Temple) and he pulls off the trick with his usual aplomb in this one. If the President here seems considerably brighter than the current real-life incumbent, that's a minor distraction in a thriller that maintains a Rottweiler-like grip on our attention: The flashlight was the only thing that saved Book II's life. Primarily because it blinded the man on top of the decompression chamber, if only for a moment. That was all the time Book II needed. His shotgun boomed, blasting their commando's goggles to pieces, sending him flying off the top of the chamber. [+]