Crime reviews: Carol O'Connell, Simon Lelic, Elizabeth George and Paul Johnston If any writer could make me break my New Year's resolution to avoid serial killer novels, it's the brilliant Carol O'Connell. Her great creation, the sociopathic cop Kathy Mallory, investigates here when a number of brutally tortured bodies, not all of them quite dead, are found suspended in the trees in Central Park. A human heart does not have to be removed and diced up before it can interest O'Connell, and her books are moving as well as thrilling. The Child Who by Simon Lelic 322pp, Mantle, £12.99 Star rating: 4 Shades of the James Bulger case hover over Lelic's third novel about a 12-year-old boy who becomes a public hate figure after killing his girlfriend. The real psychological focus of the book is the boy's solicitor, Leo, whose obsession with understanding his client's motivation endangers his own family. The less prurient writers who tackle this theme often adopt kid gloves only to strangle the life out of their work, but Lelic keeps his thriller exciting while handling the material sensitively. Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George 568pp, Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99 Star rating: 3 Inspector Thomas Lynley, aka the 8th Earl of Asherton, is moping around Cumbria on a private investigation, mourning the recent murder of his irritating wife. George is an American version of Dorothy L Sayers: she has responded to critical acclaim by writing increasingly pretentious and long-winded books that expose the two-dimensionality of her aristo sleuth, yet unaccountably presses all the buttons to make us hoover her stuff up. The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston 248pp, Crème de la Crime, £19.99 Johnston's series featuring the half-Greek half-Scottish private eye Alex Mavros can seem tamer than his Matt Wells books, but the idyllic settings make the murders grislier. Here, Alex is summoned to Crete to unravel skulduggery on the set of a film about the German invasion. Flashbacks to the war alternate with a cutting critique of the movie biz. A satisfying mix of the cerebral, the satirical and the affecting.