AN unidentified man’s found dead on the beach of an island off the Maine coast in The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, £7.99). Establishing who he is increases, instead of decreasing the baffling nature of his death and the days that preceded it.

Originally published in 2005, and out of print for years, this much admired puzzler is a very curious little book. It warns you from the start that the mysteries it presents will not be solved within its pages. Essentially a three-way conversation between two elderly, small-town newspapermen, and the young woman “from away” who is their cherished protege, it’s an open-ended meditation on mystery itself.

Why are humans drawn to mysteries? And what do we learn about ourselves from our reaction to those that remain unsolved? I found it bewitching, as many others have, but if you’re prone to frustration from whodunnits that don’t end properly, avoid it.

Katie used to be a child star on US television, and now, in her late 20s, all she is is an ex-child star. When websites ask “Whatever became of her?” the answer is nothing much, and none of it good.

Perhaps a transformative therapy retreat, accompanied by her two oldest friends and her brother’s New Age fiancee, will fix her? As it turns out, in The Retreat by Sherri Smith (Titan, £7.99), it’s more likely to kill her.

This is one of the best fun thrillers of the year, both satirical and farcical, but at the same time sinister enough to create real shocks.  
Fun is something guaranteed by the name Peter Lovesey on a book cover. His latest story of Bath CID chief Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is Killing With Confetti (Sphere, £21.99), in which Diamond, against his will and his better judgement, is put in charge of security at a wedding taking place in Bath Abbey, with the reception to be held in the Roman Baths.

The bride is the daughter of one of the West Country’s leading crime bosses, while her groom’s father is the deputy chief constable. Diamond’s near-impossible job is to prevent any rival seizing the opportunity to bump off the gangster, which would be fatally damaging to the DCC’s career.

There’s certainly going to be a killing, but as Lovesey fans will expect, there’ll be plenty of twists and misdirections before the story behind the death is finally unravelled.

In The Fragility Of Bodies by Sergio Olguin, translated by Miranda France (Bitter Lemon Press, £8-99), Buenos Aires journalist Veronica Rosenthal is intrigued by the suicide note left by a train driver who confesses to killing four people. It quickly transpires that the man wasn’t a murderer, but even so Veronica is indeed on the trail of a crime story. In a country debilitated by structural poverty and cronyism, there are plenty of rich people who see working-class lives as toys for them to play with.

Olguin gives us a superbly-paced corruption thriller which reaches an almost unbearably tense finish.