Buried bodies will keep their secrets
WILLNOT by James Sallis (No Exit Press £20)
THIS bewitching story of a mysterious discovery near the small American town of Willnot underscores Sallis’s sublime talent for using just a few words to paint the most compelling picture of life in the U.S. today.
There are no car chases in this story, no lone wolf getaway drivers as there were in his novels Drive and Driven.
Their place is taken by the unassuming, dedicated Dr Lamar Hale, who acts as surgeon and GP for the town, while at the same time providing a moral compass for his fellow citizens and his male partner Richard.
The buried remains of several people turn up in the woods, and then Hale’s old friend Bobby Lowndes arrives unexpectedly after a long absence, quickly followed by an FBI agent in pursuit of him.
The mystery is told in the gentlest, most subtle prose that captivates and unfolds like a blossoming flower.
This is poetic storytelling of the highest quality, entrancing and yet utterly unexpected, for it takes you in a direction in which you never expected to go, but without once hectoring.
COLD by John Sweeney (Thomas & Mercer £8.99)
THE award-winning investigative TV journalist for BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight wrote this brutally realistic thriller which launches a fresh hero for our times: the charismatic, if sardonic, Irishman Joe Tiplady.
Based on Sweeney’s long experience, this opening adventure begins with Tiplady walking his dog in Richmond Park in the snow, where he is followed by two burly men and a woman he calls ‘Wolf Eyes’.
Without warning he finds himself caught up in a maelstrom of violence, partly as a result of his past in espionage.
The scene changes from Britain to the Kremlin to Pyongyang in North Korea as he becomes the target for the ruler of Russia — puppet-master of some of the world’s deadliest operators in the black art of assassination.
Tiplady is no saint himself, for he has killed in the past, but he is a man determined to see justice served. There are echoes of other loner heroes, including, of course, Jack Reacher, but Tiplady is perhaps a little more nuanced, and a touch more compassionate.
THE DARKEST SECRET by Alex Marwood (Sphere £7.99)
ON THE surface, this novel looks like one based on the case of Madeleine McCann, for it begins with the disappearance of a little girl on a family holiday, though in Bournemouth rather than Portugal.
Coco Jackson, an identical twin, is just three years old when she goes missing.
But, as the plot begins to thicken, it reveals a far more complex story than simply one of abduction by an unknown person.
Coco’s parents are rich and well- connected, and her godmother is a powerful PR woman who knows exactly how to use the media to the family’s advantage.
But the mystery does not give up its secrets easily, and the truth only emerges 12 years later, in the wake of the funeral of Coco’s property-developing father, Sean.
A string of lies is revealed, all designed to cover up the dark secret of the title.
Compellingly told, Marwood offers an engagingly jaundiced view of the world in which the residents of the staggeringly expensive seaside suburb of Sandbanks near Bournemouth live, and the lengths they will go to protect their public persona.