SUNBURN

(Faber £7.99) IF YOU’RE lucky, you read one book every year that makes you ration yourself to a chapter a day because you don’t want it to end. For me, Sunburn was that book.

Lippman is often compared to such writers as the glorious Anne Tyler and the impeccable James M. Cain. Indeed, her writing is a heady concoction of similar skills.

From the first page, when a male narrator is sitting in a bar, fixated on the sunburnt shoulder of a redhead called Polly, we are hooked. We know he is being paid to spy on her.

Polly is a runaway mother living in a sleazy motel and separated from her child.

As the story unfolds, we are left guessing whether she is an innocent victim or something more sinister.

Lippman’s trademark silky prose creates a complicated world of menace and revenge.