PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
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Book review: Irresistible crime wave by masters old and new
A round-up of the best crime fiction with MAT COWARD
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
It’s always a pleasure to encounter a really unusual setting for crime fiction, but novelty alone is no good — it needs a decent story to go with it. Luckily, Forty Days Without Shadow by Olivier Truc (Trapdoor, £12.99) scores both ways.
It’s set in a Norwegian Lapland winter, at the end of the Polar Night, when there are only a few minutes of sunlight each day and where a sudden rise in temperature to -17°C strikes the locals as “almost springlike.”
Here the Reindeer Police patrol vast distances on their snowmobiles, settling disputes between the Sami reindeer breeders who make their hard living out on the tundra as they have done for millennia.
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