Published by Raven Books, 2020, 576 pages. 1634. A ship, the Saardam, is about to set sail from Batavia in the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam. The ship is carrying a secret cargo that only very few know about. On board are the ambitious Governor General of Batavia, Jan Haan; his wife Sara Wessel and …
Continue reading The Devil and the Dark Water: Stuart Turton
Translated from Spanish by Anne McLeanPublished by MacLehose Press / Riverhead Books, 2018, 508 pages. Original version published in 2015. "There are truths that don’t happen in those places, truths that nobody writes down because they’re invisible. There are millions of things that happen in special places… they are places that are not within the …
Continue reading The Shape of the Ruins: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Published by Vintage, 2002, 672 pages. When Oliver Garland, a well-respected judge, dies—ostensibly of a heart attack—his daughter, Mariah, suspects foul play. Her brother, Tal, a professor of law at a university, is sceptical. Oliver (whom Tal refers to as The Judge) was tipped to a Supreme Court judge, one of the two black judges. …
Continue reading The Emperor of Ocean Park: Stephen L. Carter
Published by Orion, 2016, 464 pages. This is a whodunit within a whodunit. One Friday evening, Susan Ryeland, the Head of Fiction at Cloverleaf Books, picks up Magpie Murders, the latest manuscript by Alan Conway—one of their most successful writers—and takes it home. She pours herself a glass of wine and starts to read. As …
Published by Summit Books / Chicago Review Press, 1991, 608 pages. “[E]ntertainment rules more lives than art and rules them more despotically. People don’t put up their guard when they’re being entertained. The images and the messages slip through and take hold deeper.” Flicker is a thriller, a history of film (with a conspiracy …
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-JonesPublished by Fitzcarraldo Press / Thorndike Press, 2019, 274 pages. Original version published in 2009. “[S]ometimes I feel we’re living in a world we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with …
Continue reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Olga Tokarczuk
Published by Pan / Mulholland Books / Mantle, 2018, 880 pages. I wasn’t going to write this, since I’ve already reviewed a book in the Shardlake series (Dark Fire). But Tombland is a little different—it is not just a murder mystery but also describes a little-known event in English history. The series centres around Matthew …
Translated from Norwegian by Don BartlettPublished by Hogarth, 2018, 624 pages. Original version published in 2018. A town in Scotland where the sun never breaks through the clouds, pollution hangs heavy, unemployment is high and people are in thrall to a potent drug called the brew, manufactured and sold by the drug lord, Hecate. This …
Published by Raven Books / Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, 544 pages. Stuart Turton takes the traditional English setting for a whodunit—a country house thrumming with secrets, tensions and fears—and turns it into something completely unexpected. I have read a lot of crime fiction, and this is one of the most original books I’ve come across. Take …
Continue reading The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: Stuart Turton
Published by Doubleday / Black Swan, 2017, 448 pages. “There are people who are drawn to water, who retain some vestigial, primal sense of where it flows. I believe I am one of them. I am most alive when I am near the water, when I am near this water.” Nel Abbott was fascinated by …
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