Very clever, except that the narrative has nowhere to go from there. The first two hundred pages has Police Sergeant Chandler Jenkins musing over which man is telling the truth while unwisely sharing information about his family with the suspects. Will his general ineptitude and that old missing-persons case presented in italicised flashbacks return to haunt him? Only readers of every crime novel ever written will know. Otherwise, professional officers of the law behave irrationally in order to manufacture drama and thus propel a pedestrian plot, proving that not all ideas should be stretched out over four hundred pages.

55 has sold in nineteen countries and optioned for film, so look out for it on the seventh level of Netflix Hell.

River of Salt (Fremantle Press, $29.99 pb, 256 pp, 9781925591569) is musician Dave Warner’s fourth crime novel, and the first not to feature duo Snowy Lane and Daniel Clement. It is set mostly in 1962. Warner launches into what feels like the start of a new series, cleverly combining the surf culture of northern New South Wales, organised crime in Philadelphia, and the dawn of skiffle music. Protagonist Blake Saunders is a young, handsome, disarming American expat who has opened a popular bar in the surf town of Coral Shoals. He delivers grog to eighteenth birthday parties in the hills, plays guitar in a band, and hits the waves when he needs to clear his mind. He does this often, for Blake is a former hitman on the run from the Mob, with two pistols and a raft of bad memories.

No one in town knows about his past, although ambitious local lawman Sergeant Nalder has an inkling that Saunders is more dangerous than he lets on. The two form an uneasy alliance when a local prostitute is found murdered in a seedy motel. The man arrested for the crime is a spoken-word artist who performs at the American’s bar. Surmising that most poets struggle to get dressed in the morning, let alone muster the energy to slice someone into pieces, Saunders sets out to prove his friend’s innocence and to uncover the real killer.

Warner creates a convincing milieu of surf dropouts and early 1960s Australiana, where coastal towns ripe for development and exploitation fall under the beady eye of underworld figures and entrepreneurs prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to forge reputations and generate income. The irony is not lost on Saunders as he proves himself a capable detective, leading Nalder and the reader on a merry dance as he exhausts every possible avenue and suspect. This is Australian crime writing at its apex – a seemingly simple case that becomes ever more convoluted as the narrative progresses, widening to encompass protection rackets, early pornographic films, racism, and country-club politics. That it takes place against the backdrop of a burgeoning 1960s counterculture is refreshing as a sea breeze. Let’s hope River of Salt signals the beginning of a new Warner series.

Former Labor Party Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is also creating an interesting crime series, albeit one that mostly eschews the presence of law and order. In Comeback (Scribe, $29.99 pb, 240 pp, 9781925713909), the sequel to Comfort Zone (2016), Tanner tackles the Australian property development gorgon, confronting issues of corruption in the Melbourne construction industry, gentrification, and homelessness. Comeback heralds the return of unlikely protagonist Jack van Duyn (pronounced like ‘spoon’, as the character states repeatedly).

Most crime novels feature some form of detective, either professional or amateur, but van Duyn breaks the mould. He is a fifty-something taxi driver in poor health, living in Brunswick squalor. His diet is awful, ants have overrun his kitchen, his sister hates him, his only friend is the ageing hippy downstairs who listens to The Alan Parsons Project, and bad luck follows him around like a mangy dog. He’s not even that sharp: when he witnesses an accident on the building site next door, it takes him forever and a day to work out that he’s caught in the firing line between unscrupulous developers, union heavies, and the local tenant’s association.

Van Duyn is a charming oaf who stumbles from one tricky situation to another, one step behind until he takes the time to do a little digging on his detractors. Refreshingly, the cabby researches on his smartphone, a narrative device that is conspicuously absent from too much modern literature. He also trawls microfiche at the State Library and rifles through a cabinet of foolscap folders, thus striking a nice balance of classic and contemporary tropes.

Tanner has given us that rarest of protagonists – one who has a job. Van Duyn’s amateur sleuthing is repeatedly interrupted by the fact he has to work long hours driving a cab. His housing situation is perilous. A simple parking fine is enough to ruin him financially. And yet he tries to help others, particularly an old colleague who is sleeping rough and a woman afflicted by chronic fatigue syndrome. Their woes are generally caused by business-led, inner-city gentrification. Tanner’s nuanced exploration of this housing crisis is a welcome narrative, lending hard-edged, working-class realism to a genre that sometimes forgets to include relatable people.

Case in point: Anna Romer’s fourth novel, Under the Midnight Sky (Simon & Schuster, $29.99 pb, 408 pp, 9781925184457). To be fair, Romer’s latest cannot be strictly classified as ‘crime’. It is more a blend of romance and mystery, with a few child murders thrown in for good measure. As protagonist Abby Bardot says early on when assigned to interview true-crime author Tom Gabriel: ‘His novels were mega-sellers across the globe, and most had been made into films or miniseries, but I’d always avoided them. Crime wasn’t my cup of tea; too much death and violence, too much darkness. Give me light and fluffy any day.’

Self-deprecating humour, or self-loathing? It is certainly a strange passage to include, but Romer’s entire venture starts out wobbly and continues in an all-too-familiar vein. Protagonist returning from the big city to her sleepy hometown? Check. Haunted by a cold case that she was obliquely involved in years ago? Check. Everyone thinks she’s crazy except the handsome outsider who just moved to the area? Checkmate. ‘He was fleshy rather than a muscle-man, but there was definition there too in the ripple of his arms, and under the soft gingery fuzz of his chest hair.’

Clearly this is aimed at a specific market, and will likely sell gangbusters, but, as with Delargy’s 55, one has to wonder how far the patience of readers can be stretched with commercial ‘fantasy’ crime stories. There is a fine line between entertaining fans and insulting them with the repetitive churn of the template novel. Under the Midnight Sky holds zero surprises for anyone versed in the genre and commits several cardinal sins, most notably frontloading the narrative by information dumping. Bardot’s brother, Duncan, pops up for no reason other than to establish a troubled backstory via the sort of casual conversation about their parents no siblings on Earth ever have. ‘You still blame her, don’t you? For what happened to you at the gorge?’