Photo: karina_lo via Adobe Stock Another year is almost over, and it’s time to look back at the books we read in 2025. As always, it’s a rich and varied collection. The fiction section includes three Booker Prize longlisted books, including the winner, David Szalay’s Flesh, as well as Tash Aw’s The South and Benjamin …
Tag: crime-fiction
Murder in the Pettah: Jeanne Cambrai
Published by Penguin, 2001, 483 pages. The body of a young English woman is found in the Pettah—a disreputable part of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Not a place where you would wander around at night. So what was the young woman, Dorothy Bell, doing in the Pettah? Who killed her? Dorothy’s father, Reginald Bell, a wealthy …
The Devil’s Flute Murders: Seishi Yokomizo
Translated from Japanese by Jim Rion.Published by Pushkin Vertigo, 2023, 348 pages. Original version published in 1973. Japan 1947. The end of the Second World War has resulted in social upheaval, and the aristocracy has lost its privileges, which earns it the moniker of the “sunset clan”. This novel is about one of these families. …
Cahokia Jazz: Francis Spufford
Review by Kristine GouldingPublished by Faber & Faber, 2023, 496 pages. Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz is an exceptional alternate history that transports readers to a reimagined 1920s America. In this version of the past, Cahokia—a thriving city built around the real-life Cahokia Mounds near a village called St. Louis—has replaced New York as the cultural …
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