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 with Mat Coward: April 4, 2022
New titles from Louise Hare, Christobel Kent, Cate Ray and Peter Lovesey
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
LENA is a struggling London club singer in the 1930s in Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare (HQ, £14.99), who receives an out-of-the-blue offer to take up a potentially career-making role in New York. The timing is convenient, as she has an urgent reason to vanish from her usual haunts for a while and a first-class cabin on the Queen Mary sounds like a good spot in which to lie low.
People warn her that the US may not be a safe place for a black woman, but Lena is confident that her dark looks can pass for Mediterranean. When a murder takes place on board which has echoes of the event from which she is fleeing, it’s clear someone is setting Lena up as a scapegoat in a dynastic power play.
A golden age ocean liner is a great setting for a whodunnit, and Hare has also created a delightful central character.
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