The Dudley Smith Trio by James Ellroy (Arrow, £12.00 in UK)

Ellroy may not be to everyone's taste, but for fans this volume, incorporating The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz, makes for explosive reading. Set in the 1950s in Los Angeles and featuring Lieutenant Dudley Smith of the LAPD, these novels portray the city as a maelstrom of destruction and violent death, with the police as much on the make as the criminals they chase. The Big Nowhere deals with the communist witch-hunts of 1950, L.A. Confidential with corruption inside the force, while White Jazz details the rise and fall of Lieutenant Dave Klein, in turn a lawyer, a bagman, a slum landlord, a mob killer, and now the pivotal foil in a complex web of plots where savagery and murder will surely intersect. Powerful stuff, as explicit as the splat of a bullet against flesh or the resultant geyser of blood.