ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
BLIND DEFENCE (Little Brown, £16.99) is the second book in John Fairfax's series about a convicted murderer who becomes a London barrister and, if anything, it's even better than the first.
This time, William Benson is reunited with instructing solicitor Tess de Vere to defend a hopeless murder case. A young woman fled her life in Dover to escape her bullying boyfriend only to die in a rented room in London, with the boyfriend's DNA all over the place.
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
Star cartoonist MALC MCGOOKIN finds lessons for today in the punch, and the economy of line, of an extraordinary generation of illustrators
BLANE SAVAGE recommends the display of nine previously unseen works by the Glaswegian artist, novelist and playwright
SYLVIA HIKINS casts an eye across the contemporary art brought to a city founded on colonialism and empire



