THIS YEAR’S BIGGEST THRILLS
Black Widow Chris Brookmyre Abacus, March 2017
The latest instalment in Brookmyre’s Jack Parlabane series has just picked up its second accolade. Lauded as the novel that “cements [Brookmyre’s] place in the pantheon of great crime writers”, it won crime novel of the year at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival held in the United Kingdom last week. In Black Widow, the maverick reporter Parlabane investigates the death of a young man who was developing a potentially lucrative and disruptive software programme, whose body cannot be found. Was he the victim of his wife, a surgeon with a controversial online persona? “Even the twists have twists,” the judging panel declared, when Black Widow won the McIvanney Prize at the Bloody Scotland festival last autumn.
Into the Water Paula Hawkins Doubleday, May 2017
It was always going to be tough to follow the huge success of Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, which sold in vast numbers and was given the Hollywood movie treatment, and reviews of Into the Water have been mixed. For her many fans, however, the story of a single mother who turns up dead, only the latest victim to be dredged from the river that runs through the old Mill House, will be a satisfying read. Hawkins is once again skilled at recounting the inner lives of her characters – a lonely 15-year-old girl left in the care of her dead mother’s sister who never wanted to step foot in her home town again.
Prague Nights Benjamin Black Viking, June 2017
John Banville turns out another thrilling and atmospheric whodunnit under his alter ego, Benjamin Black, who is well-known for writing the adventures of Quirke, a pathologist working in 1950s Dublin. This time Black turns the clock back further, to a 16th century, snow-covered Prague for a mystery with royal connections. When Christian Stern stumbles over the damaged body of the mistress of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, he is arrested and imprisoned upon suspicion of her murder. A royal pardon sets him free and lets him into the emperor’s inner circle when the young doctor is charged with apprehending her killer. A fun read for those willing to indulge Black in this historical fantasy and to suspend their disbelief.