TV hack smells a Russian rat

THRILLERS GEOFFREY WANSELL

MOSCOW, MIDNIGHT by John Simpson (John Murray £20, 336 pp)

THE BBC’s distinguished world affairs editor may sometimes seem a touch pompous, but this engaging, rip-roaring story about a TV reporter who investigates the death of a government minister friend reveals Simpson’s quirkier, more mischievous side.

The hero, Jon Swift, is an old-style TV journalist, rather too fat, old and cantankerous for the new breed of sleek young people sweeping through the studios.

But when his friend, MP Patrick Macready, is found dead in what appears to have been a sex game that went wrong, he smells a rat. When the MP’s flat is burgled days after his death, the reporter’s instincts kick in.

Swift then discovers that his friend had been looking into the deaths of Russian government figures who had been found in equally ‘accidental’ circumstances.

The reporter cross-examines his contacts from his days as Moscow correspondent — and a nest of vipers emerges.

Casting a cynical eye over TV news, the story is told with a wry, tongue-in-cheek style that delights.

THE RECKONING by John Grisham (Hodder £20, 432 pp)

THE master of the legal thriller, Grisham returns to Clanton, Mississippi, the site of his very first novel, A Time To Kill, published in 1989.

It is October 1946 and we meet Pete Banning, one of Clanton’s most famous sons, who was ‘missing, feared dead’ for three years after he surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942.

Miraculously, he survived and returned to his home a decorated war hero.

However, not long after, he takes his Army-issued Colt .45, walks into the local Methodist church and coldly shoots the pastor three times, killing him instantly. Might it have something to do with his wife Liza’s nervous breakdown?

No one knows, and Banning goes to trial, facing the death penalty, repeating: ‘I have nothing to say.’

Beautifully constructed, it captures the racial tensions of the Deep South and weaves a truly magical spell.

LOST CHILDREN by Christopher Hart (Prospero £9.99, 444 pp)

BETTER known for historical novels written as William Napier, here Hart tackles a contemporary subject — the idealism of youth and how it can evaporate. Four young medical students are in Central America, desperate to do good. The unnamed country (Guatemala?) is in the grip of drug wars, with street gangs and armed militias everywhere.

The most idealistic of the four, Nicholas, lodges with a poor family and is transformed by the experience, especially his relationship with a little girl, Lala. Conditions worsen and Nicholas’s companions all decide to return home, but he refuses.

Then Lala goes missing. Nicholas sets out to find her and purge his own bad childhood memories. Told with emotional intensity, it moves you to tears.