MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: April 18, 2023
Patricide, double identity, surveillance paranoia and an all-female crime ring that has the air of an instant classic
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
THE setting for THE MESSENGER by Megan Davis (Zaffre, £14.99) is contemporary Paris, and its never-quite-declared war between the inner city and the suburbs, the rich and the poor, the white and the not white enough.
It centres on Alex, a young man raised in both France and the US, who’s just been released from a prison sentence for his part in the murder of his journalist father.
He didn’t do it — but the trouble is, he almost did. Driven by guilt at having sold out a friend to get a lighter sentence, and anger at his wasted youth, he is now set on finding out who finished his dad off, after Alex and his friend left him beaten but alive.
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