BURIED IN DIE PAST.

Byline: LORNE JACKSON

MANY people believe the 50s was an innocent period in British history.

A time of Ealing Comedies and pipe puffing politicians.

Not according to John Lawton.

Blue Rondo (Phoenix, pounds 6.99) is the latest in his series starring 50s super-sleuth Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy.

Our hero is caught in the middle of a battle between London's up and coming East End gangs.

After being blasted by a car bomb, Troy is considering retirement.

But when an old girlfriend turns up on the scene, he is forced to confront his actions as a young man.

Lawton's tale is powerful, punchy and spliced with shards of dark humour. Once more, the author leads us into the black heart of the black and white world.

Reginald Hill's The Stranger House (Harper Collins, pounds 6.99) is a ghost story blended with a crime tale. For more than half a millennium, the Stranger House has stood in the village of Illthwaite, offering refuge to travellers. Australian academic Sam Flood arrives at this this dark and dingy construction. Being a mathematician, she isn't interested in anything that can't be explained by number crunching.

But it is crunching bones she should really be worried about.