Recent crime novels

Andrew Rosenheim is building a solid reputation for intelligent, thoughtful thrillers driven by character and theme rather than plot mechanics. His latest, Fear Itself (Hutchinson, £14.99), breaks new ground for him in that it is also a historical novel. Set mainly in the United States in the late 1930s and the first year of the second world war, it deals with the activities of the Bund, an outwardly respectable German-American organisation with a pro-Nazi agenda. Jimmy Nessheim, a young Special Agent in the recently established FBI, is given the job of infiltrating it. The stakes are high — President Roosevelt is trying to obstruct Hitler’s increasingly ruthless advance in Europe, and the Bund’s priority is to obstruct Roosevelt. Underlying this, however, is a far more sinister plot designed to keep America permanently out of the war.

This wide-ranging and well-researched novel has a plausible scenario and meticulously detailed settings, both in the United States and in Europe.