Crimes of the heart are not usually the stuff of crime novels, but when a British prime minister is having an affair with a woman half his age and slipping secret documents to his lover while his country sleepwalks toward war, the lines between immorality, illegality and treason can quickly become blurred.
In June 1914, Robert Harris opened abyss (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99) centres on then British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and aristocratic Venetia Stanley. Their torrid affair becomes a matter of national security when DS Paul Deemer, promoted from Special Forces to the War Office’s newly formed and top-secret MO5(g) division, is tasked with investigating the possibility that a German spy is responsible for the top-secret telegrams and diplomatic communications found all over the countryside outside London.
Deemer is one of the very few fictional characters in the novel; otherwise Harris draws on historical facts and Asquith’s numerous letters to Stanley (some of which are breathtaking in their recklessness and naivety) to create a gripping account of the background to the headlong plunge into war, with Asquith’s judgement in his personal and professional life being challenged by a spy force he is unaware of.
Asquith and Stanley are sympathetically drawn and fully fleshed out characters, Winston Churchill is brutally skewered as a warmongering opportunist determined to push through his “brain-mad plan” to attack the Dardanelles (“Haldane once complained that arguing with Winston was like arguing with a brass band”), and the caste-like hierarchy of London’s class system is subtly implicated in the impending carnage. On a par with Harris’s best historical novels, Precipice is a sobering depiction of how the most banal human foibles and frailties can contribute to a catastrophe of global proportions.
( Robert Harris: “Nobody cares anymore if you lie”Opens in new window. )
Some readers like their crime novels hard-hitting and realistic, others prefer a comfortable and non-threatening read. Who better to combine the two than the tirelessly imaginative Chris Brookmyre? The broken mirror (Abacus, £22) presents us with parallel crime cases: the first, the suspected suicide of a bride at her wedding, is investigated by octogenarian Scottish spinster and crime-solver Penny Coyne; meanwhile, in Hollywood, hard-boiled LAPD detective Johnny Hawke is baffled by the suspected suicide of a successful screenwriter.
As their investigations collide, the odd couple realize that something very, very strange is going on… Although the novel is full of references to classic crime novels such as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, the most apt allusion is to Dirk Gently, Douglas Adams’ metaphysical detective. While Penny and Johnny delve deeper into the dark world of the Diegesis Company, Brookmyre keeps delving into novels, movies, and video games, having a riot of fun manipulating all manner of narratives. Brookmyre’s most ambitious novel to date – and that’s saying something – The Cracked Mirror is a tour de force of high-wire plate spinning.
Interior designer Elle Littlewood devotes herself to the renovation of Château Mirabelle in Amanda Cassidy’s The perfect place (Canelo, £14.99). Although run-down, the castle is “a property some would kill for” – the question is whether Elle, who escaped the horrors of her childhood by reinventing herself as a gorgeous social media influencer, will resort to murder to preserve the illusion of her rags-to-riches story.
The rural French setting is gloriously idyllic, and Cassidy gets to the heart of Elle’s plight, convincingly conveying the nagging anxiety and paranoia that comes with Elle’s imposter syndrome. She may be vain, superficial, and a slave to social media likes, but there’s something poignant about her constant need for validation and her desire for the entire world to accept her carefully curated self-mythologizing.
However, Elle must contend with a number of problems, including her scheming producer Sue Anderson, her irresponsible fiancé Will Buchanan, and the elderly castle owner Leonard, who refuses to simply die and pave the way for Elle’s fairytale wedding. The plot takes on an episodic nature, with Elle jumping from one motive to the next – each less plausible than the last – to justify her increasingly desperate actions.
They said it was impossible, but lo and behold! The Brexit thriller is finally here, courtesy of Andy Bells Territory (Biteback Publishing, £9.85) The novel begins in 2016 with the shocking announcement that Britain’s Brexit referendum has somehow produced a result that no one expected and that no one in the political elite wanted. It centres on Alan Jarvis, a special adviser to the hastily set-up Department for Exiting the European Union, Labour MP Mitra Vakil and Davey Martin, a UKIP apparatchik disillusioned by the dismal pace of post-Brexit decoupling from Europe.
The story continues with the “impossible dream” of Brexit degenerating into a kind of “festorating, poisonous onion”, a state that creates a fevered atmosphere in which the usual hate mail that sitting MPs receive quickly turns into the naked racism and threats of violence and murder that define the novel’s thriller nature. What really convinces “Sovereign Territory” is its depiction of Westminster politics, petty grievances and scores of scores. The main players of Brexit – Truss, Corbyn, Johnson and others – are mentioned briefly as it progresses, but this novel is firmly rooted in the backrooms and grassroots of British politics, with Bell – a top-flight British political correspondent – revelling tooth and nail in the minutiae of the political war.
A research trip to the Congo in 1960 offers travel writer Gabriel Dax a remarkable opportunity in William Boyd’s Gabriel’s Moon (Viking, £20). An old college friend introduces Gabriel to Patrice Lumumba, the recently elected Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of Congo, with Lumumba wanting to make public his fear of possible assassination. When Lumumba then disappears in fear of assassination, Gabriel is approached by Faith Brown, representing an unofficial MI6 operation. Would Gabriel be interested in doing his country a simple favour?
( Patrice Lumumba: the rebel leader who was murdered and dissolved in acid with the help of the Belgian authoritiesOpens in new window. )
A Cold War twist on the classic John Buchan novel in which a hapless civilian becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine conspiracy, Gabriel’s Moon embraces our hero’s calling as a travel writer and takes the reader on a wild journey from London to southern Spain, Rome to Warsaw. Beautifully written – and, as you might imagine, particularly strong in the vivid scenery – and cleverly constructed, the novel reworks the conventions (uranium and hydrogen bombs, double agents and defectors) of the Cold War spy thriller in such a way that even the most diehard fan of the genre will be as confused as Gabriel himself when our “reluctant spy” and “useful idiot” tries to square off with professional spies and ruthless killers.
Declan Burke is an author and journalist. His latest novel is The Lammisters (No Alibis Press).
