ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
IN HELEN CALLAGHAN'S Everything Is Lies (Penguin, £12.99), London architect Sophia arrives at her parents' smallholding in Suffolk on a reluctant duty visit, only to find her mother dead and her father dreadfully wounded.
The police see it as an attempted murder-suicide, with the suicide bid unsuccessful. But this would be so out of character for the quiet couple who raised her that Sophia is convinced that a third party must have been involved.
With her father yet to regain consciousness, only she can find the truth — which must surely have something to do with the news that her rather dull mother has written an explosive tell-all memoir.
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
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



