The Cut Up by Louise Welsh; The Persian by David McCloskey; The 10:12 by Anna Maloney; Very Slowly All at Once by Lauren Schott; Vivian Dies Again by CE Hulse

The Cut Up by Louise Welsh (Canongate, £20)
This welcome third outing for gay Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke opens with his discovery of a body. Obnoxious jewellery dealer Rodney Manderson has been killed outside the Bowery auction rooms, stabbed through the eye with the Victorian hatpin that his boss, Rose Bowery, has brandished in front of the nation on Bargain Hunt. As she discussed the pin’s virtues as a deadly weapon as well as its millinerial uses, the fiercely loyal Rilke decides – while feeling grateful to have skipped lunch and trying not to think of jelly – to remove it before calling the police. They soon decide they’ve got their man, but Rilke’s not so sure; the roots of the crime may lie in the past – in particular, a notorious reform school. With a central character who feels like an old friend, The Cut Up is as sharply observed, humane and beautifully written as its two superb predecessors.

The Persian by David McCloskey (Swift, £20)
Former CIA analyst McCloskey’s fourth novel centres on Jewish Iranian dentist Kam Esfahani. Dissatisfied with life in Sweden, where his family relocated when driven out of Iran, and wanting the wherewithal to move to California, he accepts an offer from the chief of Mossad’s Caesarea Division. Returning to Tehran, he runs a fake dental practice as cover for assisting in “sowing chaos and mayhem in Iran”. Things go awry when he enlists double agent Roya Shabani, widow of an Iranian scientist killed by the Israelis. The book takes the form of a series of confessions that Kam, now caught and imprisoned, is forced to write by his torturer, and these documents – which may or may not reveal the whole truth – are interspersed with flashbacks. Kam’s cynical tone and mordant humour serve to underline not only the horror, but also the inherent hypocrisy of the endless cycle of violence and retribution: this masterly novel is tragically topical and utterly gripping.