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CURTAIN CALL by Anthony Quinn (Jonathan Cape £12.99)
AN ENGAGING, slyly witty novel about the crimes of the ‘ Tie- Pin Killer’, set in 1936 against the world of Rightwing politics, society adultery and the bitchy drama of the theatre.
Rightly acclaimed for his previous work, Quinn, now 50, has a precise eye for period detail and a deft touch with character.
His heroine, actress Nina Land, launches into an affair with society portrait artist Stephen Wyley in the once-magnificent Imperial Hotel, where she believes she interrupts a murder — thereby becoming one of the few people who may have seen the face of the killer.
The question is: should she go to the police, especially as she will then have to admit she was there that afternoon with her married lover?
Meanwhile, Jimmy Erskine, elderly doyen of London drama critics (clearly based on the great James Agate), likes to share his life with young guardsmen late into the night.
But this is certainly not a detective novel. It is a story of manners and of morality in times when what was done in private remained private — but with a killer at its heart. Try a sample: it is Radio 4’s Book At Bedtime from Monday.
RUNAWAY by Peter May (Quercus £18.99)
EXACTLY a year ago I raved about May’s last book, Entry Island, which became a best- seller and demonstrated just how much we have come to take the Glasgow-born TV screenwriter and crime novelist’s exceptional talent for granted.
This successor proves the point. At the age of 63, and with more than 20 novels and 1,000 screenplays behind him, May is going from strength to strength.
This 21st novel is a subtle, piquant story of five young Glaswegians who leave the city as schoolboys in 1965 intent on making their fortune in London, only to see their dreams shattered within a year.
Three return home filthy, broke and hungry. But 50 years later a murder in London provokes them to return to confront the demons that chased them all those years ago.
Inspired by May’s own life, and written in his typically spare prose, it tugs the heartstrings as the old men reveal the fears they have nurtured for half a century. A wonderful exhibition of just how very good May can be.
GONE by Rebecca Muddiman (Mulholland £13.99)
MUDDIMAN’S first novel, Stolen, published in 2013, established this Redcar-born young woman as a crime novelist to watch.
This, her second, underlines her progress. The story centres on the disappearance of troubled 16-year-old Emma Thornley from Middlesbrough in 1999.
The police assumed back then that she was simply a runaway. But now, 11 years later, her body has turned up in Northumberland, and Detective Sergeant Nicola Freedom sets out to solve the cold case and track down the killer.
It does not turn out to be easy as Emma had gone off the rails in the two years before she went missing for good, leaving home to live with a local bad boy and drug dealer, Lucas Yates.
The action shifts back and forth between 1999 and the hunt for her killer in 2010, highlighting the multiple possible suspects and the fractured police officers pursuing them.
The rapid changes of time and place can be confusing, but the strength of the characters maintain the story’s pace.
On this evidence, we shall hear much more of Ms Muddiman.