Peter Dinklage’s resonant turn as Hercule Poirot gives the beloved writer’s debut a charismatic reboot

When an army captain, on leave during the first world war, visits a family friend for the weekend at their country pile in Essex, he is hoping for some sunny respite from the frontline. Captain Hastings and John Cavendish are childhood friends, so Hastings is well acquainted with his family, who also include John’s brother Lawrence and their stepmother Emily.

The widowed Emily, we learn, has recently married Alfred Inglethorp, an American 20 years her junior, much to the ire of her children who believe him to be a gold digger. One night, Emily is taken ill and cries out from her bed. By the time Hastings and Lawrence arrive on the scene – they are forced to break down the door, as it is locked from the inside – she is dead. The next morning Hastings announces he has called a friend to investigate: a moustached Belgian named Hercule Poirot.

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From Maigret to Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, authors choose the whodunnits they love to hunker down with at this time of year

A Maigret Christmas and Other Stories by Georges Simenon

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The Accomplice, a noir tale found by Strand editor Andrew Gulli, considers the temptation of a grocery clerk

A previously unknown story by John D MacDonald, author of The Executioners, the novel twice filmed as Cape Fear, is published for the first time on Tuesday in the Strand Magazine.

The Accomplice is the hard-boiled story of Joey, a young grocery store worker who attracts the attentions of Belle, the much younger wife of the store owner.

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A choice of whodunnits, a return for le Carré’s Smiley, and dark, disturbing encounters in the woods

This year the trend for cosy crime novels with added bells and whistles has continued unabated, offering everything from metafiction to ghosts who solve their own murders. Bella Mackie’s second novel, What a Way to Go (Borough), is one of the best . Hedge fund boss Anthony Wistern is universally loathed, so when he dies mysteriously there are plenty of suspects. The narrative baton is passed between his widow Olivia, the obsessive crime blogger Sleuth, and Anthony himself – who, from the dingy limbo of a “processing centre”, must figure out how he perished in order to transition to the afterlife. It’s a delightful blend of whodunnit, Succession-style family infighting, and Jilly Cooperesque social comedy.

There’s more fun to be had with irredeemable characters in Jonny Sweet’s debut The Kellerby Code (Faber). Edward Jevons is in self-hating thrall to his posh, entitled university friends. He’s in love with Stanza, but his already fragile mental state is undermined by the discovery that she and Robert – to whom Edward has repeatedly confessed his adoration – are an item. As events at Stanza’s ancestral home spiral out of control, the pressure becomes unbearable. Very dark and very funny: perfect for fans of Saltburn.

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An AI police detective, a Georgian fortune teller and Indian mobsters make this year’s list of notable crime fiction

Given this year’s headlines, it’s unsurprising that our appetite for cosy crime continues unabated, with the latest title in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die (Viking), topping the bestseller lists. Janice Hallett’s novels The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels , which also features a group of amateur crime-solvers, and The Christmas Appeal (both Viper) have proved phenomenally popular, too.

Hallett’s books, which are constructed as dossiers – transcripts, emails, WhatsApp messages and the like – are part of a growing trend of experimentation with form, ranging from Cara Hunter’s intricate Murder in the Family (HarperCollins), which is structured around the making of a cold case documentary, to Gareth Rubin’s tête-bêche The Turnglass (Simon & Schuster). Books that hark back to the golden age of crime, such as Tom Mead’s splendidly tricksy locked-room mystery Death and the Conjuror (Head of Zeus), are also on the rise. The late Christopher Fowler, author of the wonderful Bryant & May detective series, who often lamented the sacrifice of inventiveness and fun on the altar of realism, would surely have approved. Word Monkey (Doubleday), published posthumously , is his funny and moving memoir of a life spent writing popular fiction.

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This raw, powerful novel is based on the Norwegian woman whose case has been notorious for more than a century

In the early 1880s, Brynhild Størset, an impoverished young maid-of-all-work, left Norway for America in search of a new life. After a brief spell living with her older sister Nellie in Chicago, she married a Norwegian man, Mads Sørensen, and killed him. Then she married Peder Gunness, another Norwegian, and killed him too. After Peder, she advertised in the lonely hearts pages for other men and killed them as well – possibly as many as 30 – butchering their bodies and burying the dismembered remains in her yard.

Such are the grisly facts of the life of the woman variously billed as “America’s first female serial killer”, Lady Bluebeard, Hell’s Princess and the black widow of La Porte. Her notoriety has earned her a place in the Guinness World Records and fascinated true crime fans for more than a century. She has inspired ballads and pamphlets and nonfiction books, a couple of films and documentaries, and at least one lengthy novel. Now the Norwegian writer Victoria Kielland has written My Men, a short, sharp shock of a book, and a distinctly fresh take on the story.

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The past catches up with nine criminals; a carer finds work with a woman accused of murder; and more than one child goes missing

MJ Arlidge’s Eye for an Eye (Orion) opens with a horrific death. Mark Willis is on his way home when three men wearing latex pig masks corner him. He can’t escape. But this propulsive thriller isn’t an investigation into his death – or at least not that alone. Mark was one of a handful of criminals in the UK granted lifelong anonymity and a change of identity because of the appalling nature of their crimes. Somehow his identity has been leaked – and the probation service now fears that eight others in the same situation are also about to be exposed.

Arlidge shifts perspectives between these (somewhat) rehabilitated offenders, the victims’ relatives, still traumatised, and the vigilantes responsible for the leaks. “He would see that they were punished for their crimes, enduring the anguish that they had inflicted on their victims. They would feel the terror, the agony, the fear that was their due.” Eye for an Eye is fast-moving, disturbing and thought-provoking.

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Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I’m currently reading and really enjoying Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It’s a lovely exploration of the creative process, passion, art and friendship. The story feels very grounded in reality; the main characters Sadie and Sam feel like real people in gaming. And not to judge a book by its cover, but it looks beautiful on my bookshelf!

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Bestselling historical crime novelist whose troubled adolescence, and part in a notorious murder, was the subject of a film by Peter Jackson

Anne Perry, who has died aged 84, was a prolific and bestselling historical crime novelist whose own dramatic criminal history came to light 15 years after her first book was published.

Perry’s debut Victorian-era mystery, in which the Scotland Yard inspector Thomas Pitt finds both the killer and an upper-class wife, was published in 1979. By 1994 she had written 13 more Pitt novels, along with five in another series set 30 years earlier, starring the amnesiac private sleuth William Monk and his wife, Hester Latterly, a former nurse in the Crimean war.

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