THE most blatantly corrupt government in British history has been something of a godsend to thriller writers over the last few years.

The bent Tory at the centre of THE FALLEN by John Sutherland (Orion, £18.99) is the new policing minister, who’s widely tripped as the next party leader. His great crusade is the privatisation of the police — a “reform” worth tens of millions to people close to him. 

Police negotiator, Superintendent Alex Lewis gets involved when he talks a distressed young woman down from a bridge in London.

She has a startling story to tell about the minister — but she also has a history of making things up. Such is the subtlety and authenticity of Sutherland’s characterisation that I was kept guessing at the truth of the situation right up until the superbly suspenseful climax. 

The currently popular sub-genre of “She’s my best friend and I hate her,” in which the intensity of coming-of-age friendships between young women leads to tragedy, has produced few better books than Ella Berman’s BEFORE WE WERE INNOCENT (Head of Zeus, £20).

When three privileged Californian school-leavers set off for a summer in the Greek isles, the reader knows only two of them are coming back — but how they reach that point, and what happens to the survivors, is irresistibly told in writing full of sad humour and tough sympathy. 

THE PRICE by Darren O’Sullivan (HQ, £8.99) is a tense and moving story featuring a married couple of police detectives in the Manchester area.

George buries himself in his biggest ever case — an attempt to bring down one of the region’s most powerful criminals — while Clara spends all her time looking after their desperately ill baby.

There’s an experimental treatment available in the United States, but it would cost them an impossible amount of money. So when Clara is approached by her husband’s target with the offer of a strings-attached donation, she has some terrible choices to make. 

Elsa Zero works as a fitness trainer and lives quietly in London, in ZERO KILL by MK Hill (Head of Zeus, £20). Even so, when people she knows and people she’s never met start trying to kill her, she’s not entirely surprised.

Her old life was always going to come back and bite her sooner or later. For now her priorities are getting her kids safe, and then finding out why half the world seems to be gunning for her.

As it turns out, Elsa’s life is pretty small beer compared to what else is at risk. 

When I categorise books like this as “bonkers thrillers,” I intend no disrespect. It’s a purely descriptive, non-judgmental phrase to describe stories that start fast and get faster, in which the stakes rise with every page, and in which the wearisome parameters of realism exist only to be scorned.

This particular example delivers not only great excitement, but also finely drawn characters and splendidly inappropriate bursts of laughter.