A new star shines in the heat and dust
A RISING MAN by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker £12.99) AN INTOXICATING debut by the son of Indian immigrants who was brought up in the west of Scotland, this introduces a detective of whom I am sure we will hear much more.
It’s 1919 and Captain Sam Wyndham is a former Scotland Yard officer who survived the trenches only to lose his wife in the influenza epidemic that followed the end of hostilities.
In search of a new life, Wyndham sets off for a post in the Indian police where he is immediately asked to investigate the death of a Government official in suspicious circumstances outside what appears to be a brothel.
Assisted by the pompous old India-hand Inspector Digby, and the British-educated but Indianborn Sergeant Bannerjee, Wyndham quickly finds himself grappling with the politics of the Raj at the highest level, but he navigates the waters with considerable bravery and skill.
For me, he is the most engaging new detective since that wonderful English clergyman Sidney Chambers in James Runcie’s Grantchester series: utterly captivating. FAR FROM TRUE by Linwood Barclay (Orion £18.99) THE second in an exceptional trilogy set in the fictional upstate New York town of Promise Falls, this lifts the lid on the darker secrets of American suburbia. It opens with the collapse of the screen in an elderly drivein theatre, which crushes and kills four people, including a man and his wife in a classic convertible Jaguar.
The dead man’s daughter asks former Boston cop-turned-private investigator Cal Weaver to look into a break-in at her father’s house in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
He discovers a hidden room that has clearly been used for sexual purposes, all captured on film, although the DVDs themselves have disappeared.
At the same time, detective Barry Duckworth is determined to solve two murders, of young women who bear a similar wound. Inevitably these two investigations interweave as the two men peel away the layers of deception that the town’s population have constructed to protect themselves.
Gripping and compulsive, it paints a vivid portrait of the decay that hides beneath the bright smile of small town life. THE HANGING CLUB by Tony Parsons (Century £12.99) THIS third outing for Parsons’ excellent, if troubled, Detective Constable Max Wolfe sees him confront a band of vigilantes who are abducting killers, paedophiles and rapists, and hanging them.
The victims include a gang member who groomed and abused dozens of vulnerable girls, a wealthy driver who mowed down and killed a child only to get off scot-free, and a hate preacher calling for the murder of British troops.
It is high summer and, as the bodies begin to pile up, so tensions in London begin to rise and riots break out, not least because some in the population believe the vigilantes are serving justice rather than breaking the law.
It is a fascinating perspective on an age-old problem — should there be an eye for an eye or should society holds itself to higher moral standards? Wolfe confronts the dilemma in a drama that engulfs him as the story unfolds.
This is Parson’s best crime novel so far and underlines his exceptional talent for sensing the zeitgeist.