The latest crime fiction: women provide their own take on sexual violence 

Having long escaped their relegation to the softer margins of the thriller genre, women writers have provided their own take on grimmer themes, including the sexual violence that has become such a staple of crime writing today. In The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford (Canongate, £16.99), Cora Berger is a South African painter who moved to London after her parents were killed in a car accident. Outwardly formidable, she has a penchant for creepy, dominating men, and finds herself under the spell of a wealthy art collector named Fournier, who has a cabin tucked away deep in the Canadian wilderness.

We are also introduced to Angel, a much younger woman who has a violent history – the result of horrendous sexual exploitation at the hands of her stepfather. Only recently released from prison, she now works for a conservation organisation, tracking the local population of wolves – an apt metaphor for someone once the victim of human ones.