Whodunnit if it wasn’t him?
THE OUTSIDER by Stephen King (Hodder £20)
UNDENIABLY one of the greatest storytellers of the past century, Stephen King is a master at revealing the horrors that lurk beneath the surface of what looks like ordinary life.
He does it again brilliantly in this story of eminently respectable and well-liked Little League baseball coach Terry Maitland, who is suddenly arrested for the despicable murder of an 11-year-old boy.
The man vehemently denies that he did it — although a string of witnesses and DNA evidence point to him.
However, then he provides conclusive evidence that he was miles away when the crime was committed.
Could the witnesses be wrong? Surely Maitland could not have been in two places at once. Or could he?
King weaves his exquisite tale with all his consummate skill, using some of the characters who first appeared in his equally magnetic Mr Mercedes. If you read only one thriller this summer, make it this one.
ULTIMATUM by Frank Gardner (Bantam £12.99)
THIS second novel from the BBC’s security correspondent confirms Frank Gardner’s place among the pantheon of distinguished reporters who have become excellent thriller writers, including Gerald Seymour and Frederick Forsyth.
Once again, it features Royal Marine and SBS veteran Luke Carlton, this time involved in a plot by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to ignore the 2015 nuclear treaty and turn Iran into a truly nuclear power.
Carlton is sent undercover into Iran, but matters become more complicated when a senior British minister is kidnapped and his close protection officer is killed.
Utterly authentic in its grasp of the intelligence community’s methods, it grips like a python from the first page, squeezing the breath out of the reader.
FOREVER AND A DAY by Anthony Horowitz (Cape £18.99)
IN 2015, Horowitz brought James Bond back to life in his thriller Trigger Mortis — following in the footsteps of fine authors such as Kingsley Amis who did the same thing.
Now, he has done it again, with the story of how Bond came to be 007 and what he was like before he emerged in Ian Fleming’s first adventure, Casino Royale, in 1953. There is even help from Fleming himself — one chapter is based on an outline he wrote for a TV series that never happened.
Yet it just does not quite work. It feels old-fashioned and a little contrived. There is none of the spectacular swagger of the 14 original novels.
This is no criticism of Horowitz, whose talent I greatly admire — only that I think it might be better now to leave Bond to the silver screen, where his glamour and insouciance live on.