Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd (Corsair, £12.99)
Unlike the Jane Austen cottage industry of sequels and prequels, there have been relatively few forays into Dickens "fan fiction". Shepherd's book is an admirable example, using characters and situations from Bleak House combined with a cast of her own devising and a few nods to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White along the way. She manages to rise above the problems inherent in appropriating someone else's creations  everyone behaves in character  and, if she can't quite match Dickens's magnificent grotesquery, she doesn't have his emetic sentimentality either. A necessary eye for squalor, meticulous research and deft plotting, as well as the ability to handle the difficult God's-eye-view narration with aplomb make this a book which, unless you are completely Dickensed-out by this stage in the bicentenary proceedings, you'll be guaranteed to enjoy.

The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury, £11.99)
Parker Bilal is the nom-de-crime of literary novelist Jamal Mahjoub, and this is the first book in a series set in Cairo and featuring private detective Makana. A former police officer and refugee from Sudan who lives on a ramshackle Nile houseboat, Makana is well placed to view the complexities of Egypt's changing political situation; Bilal's powers of description and his sensible, wryly compassionate leading man make this an enthralling read. Commissioned by the owner of a football team to find his vanished star player, Makana encounters Liz Markham, still searching for the daughter who disappeared 17 years ago, and attempts to help her. When Liz is found murdered, he decides that the two investigations are connected. To do this, he navigates his way through a fascinating, mysterious place where desperate poverty sits cheek-by-jowl with immense wealth, and where chaos, corruption, Russian gangsters and Muslim extremists abound.

A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez (Faber, £12.99)
After novels set in Amsterdam and Greece, Sherez returns home for a police procedural. The gritty London setting, DI Jack Carrigan the maverick cop, and DS Geneva Miller the sidekick who's been tasked with spying on him for their mutual boss are all, on the face of it, pretty standard fare. However, the powerful flashbacks set in Uganda, where, as callow postgraduates, Carrigan and his friends were caught up in the atrocities perpetrated by the deranged members of the Lord's Resistance Army, promise something quite different, and Sherez doesn't disappoint. The past trauma resurfaces when the murder of a Ugandan girl takes the duo into the unseen world of the illegal immigrant. Fast paced and slick, this is the first in what could well be an outstanding series.

The Fall by Claire McGowan (Headline, £12.99)
McGowan's first novel is a perceptive examination of the after-effects of murder. Privileged, naïve Charlotte is obsessed with her imminent wedding, but her world falls apart when a coke-fuelled evening slumming it in a London club goes disastrously wrong and her banker fiancé Dan finds himself awaiting trial for murder. Subsequent events bring her into contact with Keisha, a mixed-race girl with a useless boyfriend and a child in care, and DC Matthew Hegarty who, after the pleasure of a successful collar has worn off, finds himself having second thoughts and falling for Charlotte. The characters are finely drawn, and it's concern for them, rather than for whodunnit, that provides the page-turning impetus in this promising debut.

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