The best thrillers offer something more ambitious than simply raising the pulse rate of the reader. In Star of the North by DB John (Harvill Secker, £12.99), it is geopolitical complexity: the book is set in North Korea and includes unusual protagonists as well as an unsparing picture of the regime there, contrasting the wealth of the elite with the grinding poverty of the many. In the US, Korean/African American Jenna Williams is desperate for news of her missing twin, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in South Korea more than two decades ago. She is perfectly placed for CIA recruitment and is dispatched on a hazardous mission to save her sister. Once in North Korea she meets Cho, an ambitious politician in the ministry of foreign affairs who reluctantly agrees to help her, and has a surprising encounter on a train with the country’s youthful leader. John (who co-authored North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee’s memoir, The Girl with Seven Names) parlays his knowledge into a grim but incisive narrative with echoes of Martin Cruz Smith and Robert Harris. This is a masterly evocation of life under the Kim Jong-un regime with everyone, rich or poor, living in fear of the all-seeing State Security.

Abusive men continue to stalk the thriller genre, as two new novels attest. Christobel Kent is best known for her intuitive Italian sleuth Sandro Cellini, but has recently moved into the territory of the psychological thriller. What We Did (Sphere, £12.99) is set in a sedate English university city where the heroine, Bridget, works hard at her business, secure in the love of her husband and son. But she has a troubled past: her music teacher abused her as a student, and now arrives menacingly back in her life. When Bridget is driven to the edge, the consequences for everyone – including herself – are devastating. Kent’s writing has always possessed literary elegance, and that is fully in evidence here. Her earlier work maintained a balance between tense frissons and the allure of sultry foreign climes, but her subject now is the limit to which human beings can be led by the behaviour of others. Few readers will miss the baking sun of Italy, given the suspense Kent engenders these days in her own rainy stamping ground.

Another malign male terrorises the heroine of Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough (HarperCollins, £12.99). Lisa’s life has been blighted by her violent alcoholic father, John, but she has managed to escape with her daughter, Ava. Her friend Marilyn also has secrets – notably that her marriage is by no means as happy as it appears on the surface. Then Ava saves the life of a child, and the media coverage alerts John to their whereabouts. In extremis, Lisa and Marilyn resort to drastic measures. Pinborough’s previous psychological suspense novel used supernatural elements (eschewed here) and her work invariably possesses a surreal, dreamlike quality. If the steely grip of the earlier Behind Her Eyes is more fitfully apparent, the juggling of multiple viewpoints shows great elan, and the author’s storytelling is as sure-footed as ever.

The rejuvenation of the espionage thriller continues apace with Nightfall Berlin by Jack Grimwood (Michael Joseph, £12.99), his follow-up to the well-reviewed Moskva and the second book to feature resourceful British intelligence officer Major Tom Fox. In 1986, with the cold war showing signs of thawing, Fox is sent to East Berlin to engineer the repatriation of a British defector. The mission is compromised, and Tom, accused of murder, soon has pitiless Stasi agents on his trail. Grimwood had a previous career as an SF writer under the name Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and the off-kilter, vaguely phantasmagoric atmosphere here recalls his earlier books.

Another genre in rude health is the historical thriller, with impressive debuts published by the week. The House on Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve (Raven, £12.99) is a highly original if slightly overlong work, inaugurating a series set in Victorian London. This vision of the 1880s is of Stygian hue, with the hero, Leo, accused of the murder of his lover Maria and obliged to track down the real killer. The twist is that Leo was born as Charlotte, and the transgender theme – unfamiliar in the genre – is handled with sympathetic understanding.

Isabelle Grey honed her skills in television, and Wrong Way Home (Quercus, £20.99) demonstrates her command of the thriller idiom. DI Grace Fisher is working on a 25-year-old cold case in which a woman was raped and murdered near the site of a fire in Southend. DNA evidence opens up new avenues, but with a suggestion that the police were less than diligent at the time of the original crime. As in earlier Fisher outings, Grey furnishes a striking, unpretentious thriller that keeps readers pleasurably perplexed.

Barry Forshaw’s latest book, Historical Noir, is published by Pocket Essentials/No Exit.