GEOFFREY WANSELL Is this ghost writer seeing a real ghost?

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER by Emma Bamford

(Simon & Schuster

£20, 448pp) PROFESSIONAL ghost writer Maddy Wright’s career has stalled, so she jumps at the chance to work on Skin Deep — a memoir of world-famous cosmetic surgeon Angela Reynolds. She finds herself marooned in the surgeon’s glass-walled house in the Scottish Highlands, with only herself for company.

The surgeon leaves her extensive notes, but is never there. She also refuses to answer any personal questions, which leaves Maddy confused. Enter Reynolds’s enigmatic business partner Scott De Luca, who entrances the ghost writer, only to die unexpectedly, leaving her bereft. Back in London she thinks she sees the dead man. But that’s not possible — is it?

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, Bamford’s story is every bit as intricate and impressive.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? by Shari Lapena

(Bantam £18.99, 352pp) THIS creepy masterpiece from the gifted Lapena focuses on the little town of Fairhill in Vermont.

Much admired and beautiful teenager Diana Brewer is found naked and butchered in a hayfield with vultures flying overhead. The residents — all of whom know each other — are astounded. Who could possibly have committed such a dreadful crime? Not someone from Fairhill surely?

Fingers start pointing towards Diana’s athletic boyfriend, but the cloud of suspicion lingers over everyone — all have their secrets. Lapena tells her story with elegance, forcing the reader to turn the page at an ever increasing pace, and never letting the excitement falter.

A DEATH IN CORNWALL by Daniel Silva

(Harper Collins £22, 432pp) THERE could never be another James Bond but Silva’s dashing art restorer and sometime spy, Gabriel Allon, is his 21st-century successor.

A celebrated professor of art history from Oxford is found murdered in the same seaside village in Cornwall where Allon once hid out to save his life.

The boy who befriended him then is now a detective and recruits Allon to help unravel the mystery of what happened to the professor. It emerges that she was searching for a Picasso that was looted by the Nazis and could be worth $100 million.

So begins Allon’s race across Europe, sweeping from Rome to Paris to London.

Perfectly pitched, it is a glamorous, elegant treat and allows Silva to reveal his inner Ian Fleming.