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
The murder of an archaeology professor and one of her young students, with whom she was having a not very secret affair, leads Inspector Christian Tell and his Gothenburg police colleagues on the trail of ancient treasures looted from Iraqi museums during the US-EU invasion.
But in Babylon (Phoenix, £7.99) by Camilla Ceder, there’s also a more obvious suspect — the dead man’s girlfriend, who is undergoing treatment for impulsive behaviour arising out of an obsessive fear of infidelity.
Readers of Swedish crime fiction will be used to the strong focus on the tortured emotional lives of police, victims and suspects alike. But this book, perhaps best described as a psychological police procedural, breaks with the “Scandi-crime” stereotype in one way — although troubled, the characters are not all pathologically miserable.
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a methodical unmasking of the US media’s complicity in the Israeli genocide, that should be a template for what’s needed to bring Britain’s corporate media to book
DENNIS BROE points out that two popular TV series promote police violence and disguise it as ‘fun’
Timeloop murder, trad family MomBomb, Sicilian crime pages and Craven praise
A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream


