MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
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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
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
New releases from Paul Weller, Wet Leg, and Dino Saluzzi
PAUL DONOVAN relishes the spectacle of a 1950s detective in pursuit of a 500-year-old murder mystery
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
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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A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream
A corrupted chemist, a Hampstead homosexual and finely observed class-conflict at The Bohemia
Beet likes warmth, who doesn’t, so attention to detail is required if you’re to succeed, writes MAT COWARD
