CRIME
SLEEP NO MORE by P.D. James (Faber £10)
iN these six crime short stories, P. D. James rings all the changes. We have a retired judge haunted by his boyhood connivance in murder; a tale of revenge that rebounds on the perpetrator; a mystery writer who recalls solving a family murder; a revelation of patricide; and a plot to dispose of an inconvenient husband.
it concludes on a lighter note, with a delightful comeuppance for two grasping siblings who have parked their father in a cheap nursing home.
the few improbabilities are effectively disguised by the sublime quality of James’s writing. she never puts a word wrong.
Moreover, she is the unrivalled portrayer of the sort of bad character who keeps up a convincing performance until the mask is torn off to reveal evil intent. With endings sometimes shocking and never less than surprising, she leaves her readers gasping.
PORTRAIT OF A MURDERER by Anne Meredith
(British Library £8.99) the festive spirit is noticeably absent in this Christmas mystery. As head of the gray family, a meanminded, curmudgeonly patriarch is roundly hated by his children, who gather for their annual get-together in the vain hope of financial advantage. one refusal too far leads to murder.
since the identity of the killer is known to us almost from the start, the puzzle is in whether he can get away with shifting the blame onto another guest.
With a sharp eye for hypocrisy, Anne Meredith skewers a politician whose sole aim is to acquire a peerage, a city conman for ever seeking the easy path to riches and an artist who sacrifices his wife and children to his selfproclaimed genius. the culmination is a clever twist on the theme of rough justice.
A COLD CASE IN AMSTERDAM CENTRAL by Anja de Jager
(Constable £8.99) A MAN falls to his death from a high building in Amsterdam. An accident? it seems so, but Detective Lotte Meerman is not so sure. her suspicions of dirty work harden when she finds that the victim had deposited a bag of human bones at the station’s Left Luggage.
if that is not enough of a shock, the bones turn out to be from two skeletons: one dating from the end of the war; the other of more recent vintage.
the unfolding story takes us back to 1944 when holland, bypassed by the invading Allies, faced starvation while resistance fighters and collaborators clashed on the streets.
the leap forward to the present embarks on another struggle between conflicting versions of the truth.
in all, it makes for a harrowing but absorbing read. this may not be the tourist-friendly Amsterdam of the tour guides, but led by Anja de Jager it has the smack of reality.