Guilt by Ferdinand von Schirach, translated by Carol Brown Janeway (Chatto & Windus, £12.99)

Based on cases in which German defence lawyer Von Schirach was involved, these stories have their starting points in bad decisions and people trapped by circumstance as well as in acts of savagery. Ranging from the inexplicable gang-rape of a waitress by a group of "perfectly normal" brass-band musicians to a farcically bungled drug heist and a man falsely accused of assaulting a schoolgirl, they are told in matter-of-fact, unemotional prose, ably translated by Janeway. As well as the nature of guilt itself, the underlying themes here are the limits of legislation and the gap between law and justice. While the stories don't, collectively, have the same impact as Von Schirach's earlier book, Crime, they are well worth reading: unsettling, macabre and occasionally funny but always illuminating, made so by the writer's calm, unshowy humanity.

Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar, translated by Shaun Whiteside (Blue Door, £12.99)

Another translation from German on the theme of guilt  this time literally and metaphorically hammered home  Sorry is the first adult novel from children's author Drvenkar. Four friends with troubled pasts start up the eponymous agency, which specialises in making apologies to people who have been wronged by their clients. Things start to go badly wrong when they are asked to make a speech of contrition to the corpse of a woman who has been nailed to a wall  If you can get past the slow start and the hefty suspension of disbelief required by the  admittedly intriguing  premise, Sorry speeds up nicely to become a cleverly plotted, switchback read, provided you can stomach gimmicky irritants such as the character introduced at the beginning as "You" and the occasional intrusion of a bossily omniscient narrator.

The Black Rose of Florence by Michele Giuttari, translated by Howard Curtis (Little, Brown, £14.99)

The fifth book in the Italian writer's series featuring Chief Superintendent Ferrara begins with the mutilation of a corpse, after which the daughter of a wealthy and influential man is discovered naked and strangled, a black rose placed between her legs. Ferrara is receiving cryptic anonymous letters warning him off the case, and his superiors aren't being very supportive, either. As the body count mounts up, the book establishes itself as an excursion into Dennis Wheatley territory, with a bunch of Florentine movers and shakers dabbling in the dark arts, assisted by an English toff. All of this has the potential for an entertaining page-turner, but unfortunately the plot, meandering at best, is full of holes, the cliché-laden prose fairly clomps along and far too much of the dialogue is risibly improbable.

The Dark Winter by David Mark (Quercus, £12.99)

Set in a bleak, wintery Hull, former crime reporter Mark's debut novel introduces DS Aector McAvoy, gentle giant and devoted family man, keeping his head down in a police department riven with internecine warfare. He is dealing with a series of killings in which the victims are all sole survivors of past tragedies, including the sinking of a trawler, a massacre in Sierra Leone and a domestic fire. Using a mixture of straight detective work and intuition  McAvoy has also had a near-death experience  he tracks down an adversary who's after an altogether different sort of justice. Fast-moving and tightly plotted, with strong characterisation and a likeable protagonist, this is an extremely promising debut, albeit with a bit too much striving for effect on show in one-line paragraphs and a tendency towards over-egged dialogue.

 Laura Wilson's A Capital Crime is published by Quercus.