REISSUES

Our pick of the paperbacks this month is Nick Harkaway’s GNOMON ( , out now, Windmill Books). Both a state-of-thenation address about surveillance creep and a fiendishly plotted, cyberpunktinged whodunit, it centres on an investigator charged with finding out how a cult writer came to die in custody. We said: “A novel of energy and huge ambition, which confirms the emergence of a major talent.” There’s another mystery to be solved in Adam Roberts’s

THE REAL-TOWN MURDERS ( , out now, Gollancz). In a robotmanned factory no human is ever allowed to enter, a body is discovered in the boot of a car. When a gumshoe investigates how it got there, she gets in trouble with shadowy elements of the authorities. We said: “Riffing on the way Alfred Hitchcock might have handled such a whodunit, it provides the kind of elegantly playful fun at which Roberts excels.” Finally, our reviewer didn’t much rate the latest from Andy Weir, author of The Martian.

ARTEMIS ( , out now, Del Rey) follows Jazz Bashara, a smuggler living in the titular lunar city, who’s pitched into a conspiracy between gangsters and corporations when she agrees to pull off a dangerous score. We said: “Weir’s world-building is brilliant at the small details, but less convincing on some of the broader strokes of his Moon-based society. Mainstream thriller readers may find Artemis fresh and surprising, but sci-fi fans are more likely to be a little disappointed.”