Alex Gordon's pick of the new book and film releases

RESURRECTION WALKMichael Connelly; Orion £22This is another American crime masterpiece from Connelly that has a court battle at its core .Every Connelly book’s his best… until the next one!

It’s amazing that he can write a top-class annual book while producing the Harry Bosch TV shows for Amazon Prime, and the Mickey Haller ‘Lincoln Lawyer’ series for Netflix.

This powerful thriller features both defence lawyer Haller and now-retired former LAPD detective Bosch, as his investigator.

After freeing an innocent man from prison, Haller’s inundated with pleas for help from convicts. He asks half-brother Harry to pick a Pro Bono needle from a haystack. Someone he feels is wrongly detained.

Harry’s instinct takes him to the plight of Lucinda Sanz who took a plea deal to avoid a life sentence for shooting her former husband, County Sheriff Deputy Roberto Sanz after an argument.

Bosch quickly spots holes in the prosecution’s evidence and the battle is on to free a woman who’s already spent five years in a cell. Bosch suspects the dead cop and his buddies were in league with a Mexican gang who had Sanz murdered and his ex-wife framed.

The scene’s set for a tense court clash as legal gunslinger Mickey goes up against a tough state prosecutor with his reputation to protect.10/10THE EDGEDavid Baldacci; Macmillan £22Fans are in for a blast as Travis Devine (The 6:20 Man), returns…hurrah! When a young woman’s murdered in a small Maine coastal town Devine’s inserted by Homeland Security to find out who killed her, as enemies of the US may be behind it.

There’s high level concern because the victim, CIA analyst Jennifer Silkwell knew all the nation’s secrets.

But Travis comes up against a wall of silence and secrets in the community and the plot thickens as someone wants Devine dead. A pulse-pounding treat!9/10CALICOLee Goldberg; Severn House £21.99Stranger things are happening in the Mojave Desert city of Bairstow, and neighbouring Calico, a mining ghost town, than newcomer cop LAPD outcast Beth McDade expected.

The creator of TV’s Monk, and some US bestsellers, will blow your socks off with this Twilight Zone-ish mystery.

A man who is killed when he runs in front of a camper van should have been dead a long time ago, because his few possessions are from the 1800s. Then a 100-year-old skeleton is discovered wearing modern clothes, and things get really weird.9/10

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: SEASON 1

Acorn, cert 18

Blu-ray 2-disc set £29.99 & on Digital

If you fancy this for a great night in with supper on the side, you might want to make it something heavy on the garlic.

Joking aside, this brilliant adaptation of the late Anne Rice’s vampire classic has been a hit on BBC2, It’s sexier, more sinister, and closer to the original book than the 1994 cinema version with Hollywood young guns Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

In this sumptuous-set version, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson - pictured) summons journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) to his home in Dubai - well shuttered against the sun - to resume an ill-tempered interview that began 49 years ago. Molloy’s now a grizzled veteran, while Louis, who’s around 150 years old, still looks young and hunky.

It seems Louis wants to tell his story of being undead to get some things off his chest, particularly about his fateful meeting with Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), a powerful French vampire in 1900s’ New Orleans. At the time Louis was a rarity, a wealthy Southern black man with a bordello in the red light district, and allowed to mix in white society, so long as he remembered to call the white guys ‘sir.’ Restless and unfulfilled, Louis falls for Lestat’s sophisticated world-travelling tales of undying adventure and is seduced into that fateful bite.

However, Louis is going to discover that immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The balance of their globe-hopping bite ride changes when they bring young and psycho vampire Claudia (Bailey Bass), who is stranded on the wrong side of womanhood, into their lives.

Season 2 is coming.

9/10

WICKEDLY EVIL

101 Films

On Digital

There’s black Irish humour in this heist/horror comedy that would’ve done well on DVD in pre-streaming times. Now it risks getting lost in the stream, but it’s worth seeking out.

Two bungling robbers in frog masks (the Ninja Turtles were out of stock) pull off a heist. Not their brightest idea because the cash and cocaine belongs to an Irish crime family.

Then the mob’s youngest sister Louise spots them, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. She wings one of them but gets knocked out and kidnapped.

Big trouble’s on the way when they hide out in a desolate house where real evil lurks, and they ignore the creepy neighbour’s warnings.

7/10

MERCY FALLS

Bingo Films

On Digital

There’s horror in the Highlands in this scenic and, at times, scary Brit screamer. Despite bad childhood memories of the place that induced nightmares, Rhona (Lauren Lyle) decides to try and find the cabin where she spent her last holiday with her dad.

She takes along boyfriend Donnie (Joe Rising) and a couple of friends. When they’re joined by a strange hitchhiker Carla (Nicolette McKeown) sexual tension charges the already febrile mix. The feeling the party’s doomed grows with a local newspaper story about an escaper from a psychiatric institution.

It’s Carla.

Then death and disaster follows on the misty moors as fears grow and Rhona’s childhood nightmare comes true in blood-soaked horror.

7/10