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Round-up 2016: Crime fiction with Mat Coward
Star columnists run through what’s impressed them this year
ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
WHEN I reviewed A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny (Sphere) earlier in the year, I suggested that it was “the sort of book you might want to save for Christmas” because this series, set largely in an isolated Quebecois village, is rich in snow, reunions, food and booze, neighbourly conviviality and other such seasonal themes.
Its satisfyingly complex mysteries do not exclusively involve criminal matters and all Penny’s books carry an elusive, haunting air of strangeness without ever quite setting foot outside the real world.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that this is a “cosy,” however, because, as always, it sees retired Chief Inspector Gamache investigating violent death, corruption and the lasting consequences of cruelty.
Similar stories
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
Timeloop murder, trad family MomBomb, Sicilian crime pages and Craven praise