Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, £20)
Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan’s excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What’s drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q’s old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are worthy of the Fleming canon – Napier’s revolutionary work may have terrible consequences – and even if you’re not a Bond fan, you can’t fail to enjoy this solidly plotted and unexpectedly funny blend of nostalgia and new technology.
The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, £22)
Bestseller Cleeves’s latest novel is billed as the return of Jimmy Perez, as Perez and his life partner DI Willow Reeves, now living on the Orkney Islands with their young son, team up to solve a murder. It’s nearly Christmas when Jimmy’s old friend Archie Stout is found dead at the site of an archeological dig, felled by a Neolithic stone purloined from the local heritage centre. Suspects soon proliferate: the artist with whom roving-eyed Archie may have been having an affair; teacher and local history enthusiast George Riley; mediagenic archeology professor Tony Johnson, and even the deceased’s wife. With an evocation of place that is second to none, Cleeves keeps the narrative plates spinning beautifully to create a complex plot that takes in both the thorny issue of who controls heritage and the pernicious effects of online misogyny.
