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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Best of 2019: Crime fiction
BEST PLOTTER: MW Craven
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
POLICE start panicking when murder victim Elizabeth walks up to a cop in Cumbria and declares herself alive in Black Summer by MW Craven (Constable, £7.99). The man convicted of her killing, an egomaniacal celebrity chef, has already spent six years inside.
DS Washington Poe of the Serious Crimes Analysis Section is horrified, and not just because he might have been involved in a miscarriage of justice. His greater worry is his absolute certainty that chef Keaton is a ruthless, intelligent killer.
The DNA test doesn’t leave any room for doubt that Elizabeth is who she claims to be. But, whatever the lab says, Poe knows that Keaton is up to something. An impossible crime has taken place and, unless Poe and his colleagues can prove it within a few days, the evidence will be gone forever.
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A late Christmas cornucopia, a Canadian wolf, a dodgy motel and Peter Diamond’s last bow
MAT COWARD picks the jewels, new and old, from the endless crime scenes of fiction