IN PRETTY THINGS by Janelle Brown (Weidenfeld, £8.99) Nina is forced by her con artist mother’s medical bills to abandon her attempt to escape the family trade.

She makes a living stealing from ultra-rich hedonists in Los Angeles but rising hospital bills mean she now needs to devise a more ambitious scam, so she returns to the scene of a teenage humiliation, the Lake Tahoe mansion of billionaire heiress Vanessa.

Nina sees her as a perfect target — rich, vapid and untouched by the vicious unfairness of the class system. But this book warns that when you meet your enemies, you are in danger of discovering that they are human after all and that can cause all manner of complications.

This is a highly readable and intelligent combination of a con-job thriller and a novel about friendship and betrayal.

How to Kidnap the Rich by Rahul Raina (Little Brown, £14.99) is another story about grifters. It centres on Ramesh, the young son of a Delhi chaiwallah, who’s escaped his brutal origins and made it to the good life — or at least to a kind of good life, even though it’s one that can only be maintained by lies, paranoia and crime.

His work taking exams on behalf of thick or lazy rich boys has hit an unexpected jackpot and as a result he is now the brains behind India’s number one TV quiz show.

How this leads to his involvement in kidnapping, both as perpetrator and as victim, provides the exciting plot of this funny and touching satirical action thriller, in a setting that feels very fresh.

Beneath the streets of 1950s London, in elaborate tunnels and chambers abandoned since the war, a firm of private investigators fight a secret war against crime in Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder by TA Willberg (Trapeze, £14.99).

Marion Lane is among the current intake of apprentices hoping to survive a rigorous training programme to become one of Miss Brickett’s Inquirers. She has more immediate concerns, however, when a murder takes place within the underground lair itself.

A near-fantastical set-up, which just manages to stay on the James Bond rather than the Harry Potter side of the genre divide, drives a promising start to a fun series.

County Clare heart surgeon Luke is beginning to realise that his marriage to the daughter of a ruthless local political dynasty may not be a love match as far as his wife Alison is concerned in Guilty by Siobhan MacDonald (Constable, £8.99).

With an election campaign coming up, Alison uses her PR company to raise Luke’s profile as a reluctant celebrity, but she shows little interest beyond that in him or in their adopted daughter.

They are, however, locked together by a terrible shared secret, but now it’s clear that some unknown, and potentially deadly, third party has dug up what they have spent years burying.

This unusual psychological thriller concludes with a satisfying succession of twists.