BLIND DEFENCE (Little Brown, £16.99) is the second book in John Fairfax's series about a convicted murderer who becomes a London barrister and, if anything, it's even better than the first.

[[{"fid":"2676","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]This time, William Benson is reunited with instructing solicitor Tess de Vere to defend a hopeless murder case. A young woman fled her life in Dover to escape her bullying boyfriend only to die in a rented room in London, with the boyfriend's DNA all over the place.

But Benson and de Vere discover there's a lot more to both accused and victim than was immediately apparent. Could their loathsome client be innocent, after all?

A good mystery, meaty courtroom drama, the ongoing puzzle of Benson's own history and some knowledgeable assaults on the Tories' policy of justice on the cheap add up to a great read.

A massive power cut in Stockholm looks like a terrorist act, in Acts Of Vanishing by Fredrik T Olsson (Sphere, £8.99), especially when intelligence operatives link it to similar events around the globe.

[[{"fid":"2677","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]But there's a puzzle. No demands are made and no terrorist group claims responsibility or is even suspected of involvement. If it isn't an attack, what else could it be?

This is a compelling techno-thriller, which asks a pointed philosophical question — do we create weapons to match our enemies or enemies to match our weapons?

Victorian apothecary Jem Flockhart has lived her whole life in male disguise, so it's only natural in The Blood by ES Thomson (Constable, £14.99) that she should stand in for a male colleague when he vanishes from his duties on board a seamen's hospital ship moored in the London docks.

[[{"fid":"2678","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]It quickly becomes apparent that Jem isn't the only one with secrets to keep aboard the old vessel. Why would ambitious doctors choose to work in such a hopeless place? And what is the connection with the desperate young woman found dead nearby?

You'll need a strong stomach for this one. Thomson is a historian of medicine and she doesn't spare us the details of the morgue, the dissecting room or the wards. It's a pungent and absorbing piece of social history with an amateur detective you'll be glad to follow.

Jonas has a thoroughly white-collar backroom job at British Intelligence in Beside The Syrian Sea by James Wolff (Bitter Lemon Press, £13.99). He's that sort of chap, good at detail, socially awkward, rather repressed until his father's taken hostage by Isis while on a humanitarian mission to Syria and nobody cares about the elderly vicar's fate except his son.

[[{"fid":"2679","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]So Jonas, entirely unprepared by experience or temperament, is going to have to become a field agent for the first and last time in his life, while staying one step ahead of Mossad, the CIA, Hezbollah, Isis itself and his own employers.

Superbly written and plotted, both subtle and aware in its politics, funny and exciting, Wolff's debut is also the most surprising and genuine novel about love you'll read all year.