Crime fiction: Dark tales, with the worst people, for respite from that Christmas cheer

There is no honour among thieves – and not much among the police – in Sharon Bolton’s The Mortician (Orion, £22), which contains more than a few surprises in its tattoo-clued plot. Nobody has clean hands here, including (it will turn out) Ella Foxton, the unassuming proprietor of a small Lancashire funeral parlour.

When not caring for bodies in her charge, Ella dotes on her brother Olly and nurtures a growing Instagram following with her thoughtful posts about trends such as Swedish death cleaning. Her quiet livelihood is upended when local crime boss Jonny Massey insists she arrange his murdered brother Jimmy’s funeral.

This draws Ella into an old gangland feud, replete with a game of musical corpses. That plot runs parallel to a decades-old double murder that retired detective Brian Rushton has never forgotten.

After offering readers an early connection between Rushton’s old case and Ella’s current situation, Bolton…