STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Crime fiction
Reviews of Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza, The Anatomy Of Desire by LR Dorn, The Turnout by Megan Abbott, and Rider on the Rain by Sebastien Japrisot
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
WHILE heavily pregnant with her fifth child, Andrea Stern stumbles across a murder scene at a New Jersey petrol station in Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza (Titan, £8.99). Even the fact that her toddler manages to contaminate the evidence by peeing all over it doesn’t stop Andrea from noticing what a botched job the police are making of the forensics.
She’s always resented having had to give up her career as an FBI profiler almost before it began to be a mother and wife and she’s not going to miss out on this chance to get her brain back into action.
Andrea allies with a disgraced local journalist searching for the story that might take him back to the top or, at least, away from the bottom. Together they uncover a conspiracy rooted in the US’s apartheid past in what’s a very funny yet very serious debut crime novel by the co-creator of the comic Deadpool.
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