Death Under a Little Sky, by Stig Abell (HarperCollins, $35)
Ex-detective Jake Jackson inherits an isolated old house in the country from his eccentric, hermit-like uncle. He leaves his job, his marriage and London for a new off-the-grid life where he goes skinny dipping – there is no shower until he builds one – and avidly reads his way through his uncle’s collection of crime novels. (A big thank you to the author, an English journalist and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, for the introduction to the wonderful Josephine Tey, who I had somehow neglected to discover.)
Jake has swapped the life he thought would make him happy for a solitary one in which he is not exactly unhappy or happy. Instead, he settles for a sort of contentment in that much reduced life, which replicates that of his uncle’s.
He now has no interest in crime, beyond the pages of fiction, but, as beautiful and remote as his patch of almost paradise is, crime will find him. During a village treasure hunt, the bones of a woman are discovered. This sends Jake, his new friend – the very attractive local vet – and a slightly mad botanist on a treasure hunt of their own.
Because in the countryside, where “it is a long way, as the heron flies, between lights … There is much silence and gloom in between … Things rustle and murmur; creatures slink and scurry. Not just animals but the occasional human, too. The expanse is too forgiving for those with malign intent, and you can disappear into the twilight softness with great, alarming ease.”
This is a terrific debut. The writing is magical. The characters are endearingly odd. As enjoyable a read as a Josephine Tey.
Independence Square, by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster, $37.99)
Martin Cruz Smith’s magnificently melancholic, stubbornly subversive, romantically doomed Russian police investigator, Arkady Renko, who became one of crime fiction’s most followed fictional detectives in Cruz Smith’s 1981 novel Gorky Park, returns. In Independence Square, he is being stuck on desk duty by his corrupt boss, a pawn of the Putin regime, in an attempt to stop him putting his non-patriotic nose into corners unsavoury.
Ha. He ends up in the Ukraine, just before the invasion, in search of an anti-Putin activist. Intrigue and espionage follow, of course. As do the complications of his relationships with both former loves, his love and hate relationship with Russia, and the impossible task of ever coming to terms with his father’s past as “Stalin’s favourite general”.
The Hike, by Lucy Clarke (HarperCollins, $32.99)
Four high-school friends, now adults, reunite every year for a week. There is a pop star, Joni, who is rich and famous and, of course, a drug and ego addict. There is a sensible doctor, Liz, with the perfect life: kids, nice house, loving husband and a divorce looming. There is a loser, Maggie, a single mother with no money. There is a high-flying businesswoman, Helena, who has sworn never to have kids, but may be up the duff. They all have secrets. They always have had secrets.
They usually spend their annual week at resorts in sunny places where you can get cocktails delivered poolside. This year, they are persuaded by one of the girl gang to go on an adventure: a trek up a dangerous Norwegian mountain. Amazingly, they are ill-equipped: they don’t have the gear, and fitness-wise and emotionally, they are ill-prepared.
In the prologue, one of the sorority – they all carry the past petty gripes and grievances of high school up that mountain – is found dead on the mountain. But who? And why? And who cares? Silly bints. Push ‘em all off for all I care.
Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane (Abacus, $37.99)
Civil rights-era clashes and violent opposition to desegregation may be historically more associated with the American South, but Boston author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone) turns the lens on the hypocrisy and hate of his hometown in his superb new novel.
In the summer of 1974, a heatwave choked Boston, and Irish-American neighbourhoods were whipped into a frenzy at the prospect of court-ordered bussing of students to desegregate schools. Mary Pat Fennessey is a lifetime resident of the housing projects of South Boston, a tough widow whose son overdosed after Vietnam and whose second husband left.
When Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules doesn’t come home the same night a young black man is found dead on the subway tracks, she’s concerned, then furious as the people she’s identified with her whole life offer platitudes rather than solutions.
Even the local “protectors”, the Irish Mob, quickly lose interest. Why? Lehane deploys a woman with nothing left to lose to soak readers in the tribalism, racism and violence that pulses through America’s streets, where the poor and vulnerable are set against each other. Taut and powerful.
Broken Light, by Joanne Harris (Orion, $37.99)
Female rage also crackles through this fascinating new thriller from Yorkshire author Joanne Harris, who writes across genres and forms from fantasy to historical to magical realism and is best known for Chocolat, her 1999 novel adapted into a film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Here, Harris adroitly meshes crime fiction with magical realism as middle-aged Bernie Ingram, née Moon, finds her life changing dramatically as she begins menopause.
Bernie’s dreary, invisible existence – withered relationships with her husband, grown son and childhood best friend – is jolted by the murder of a female jogger in a local park. Misogyny and victim blaming follow. Bernie’s simmering rage reignites a childhood ability to “see” into the minds and hearts of others. And manipulate them, from the inside.
But will her efforts to remake herself as well as “helping” weak and wicked men see the error of their ways backfire? Could her powers have deadly consequences, yet again?
Told through twin narratives, Broken Light is a unique thriller. Thought-provoking, anger-inducing and brilliant.
The Detective, by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill Secker, $37)
The insidious threat of unchecked technology adds extra spice to this terrific third instalment in Ajay Chowdhury’s moreish series starring disgraced Kolkata detective Kamil Rahman.
Chowdhury, who was himself a hugely successful tech entrepreneur (think Shazam) before becoming a crime writer, spins an engrossing tale where Rahman, now a fresh Detective Constable with the Met, is part of a team investigating the murder of a tech chief executive whose company was on the verge of a secret $4 billion sale.
Why would a company that creates algorithms for a dating site be so valuable? As cloak and dagger events hamper the investigation, and Kamil’s friend-or-more Anjoli digs into the discovery of three century-old skeletons, another murder turns up the heat.
The Detective is a rip-roaring crime novel that nicely balances humour and Kamil’s personal misadventures with serious issues, including the tension between privacy and security and prejudices modern and ancient.
