CRIME AND THRILLERS

THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins £12.99) A SOCIETY wedding on a remote island off the Irish coast is the setting for this beguiling mystery. A storm is raging and the lights keep going out as someone is murdered. Did the killer sneak on to the island, or are they one of the guests? It is a tantalising delight.

THE PART TIME JOB by P. D. James (Faber £3.50) THE ‘Queen of British Crime’, P.D. James, would have been one hundred years old this summer. To celebrate, her publishers have produced this little gem of a short story in book form. A boy vows to take his revenge on the school bully, but is in no hurry to do so: as delicious as it is dark.

THREE HOURS by Rosamund Lupton (Viking £14.99) THE siege of a school in rural Somerset, by two armed men during a violent winter snowstorm, is the background to this riveting story. A group of seven-year-olds are trapped in the pottery room with a gunman peering through the window as the parents congregate nearby. Unputdownable.

KEEPER by Jessica Moor (Viking £14.99) A FRIGHTENING evocation of the violence and abuse that can be directed against women, this focuses on counsellor Katie Straw who works at a women’s refuge. When her body is pulled from the river the first thought is suicide, but a bleaker truth begins to emerge. Superb.

MY DARK VANESSA by Kate Elizabeth Russell (4th Estate £12.99) THIS is the haunting tale of a 15-year-old girl who embarks willingly on an affair with her 42-year-old English teacher. Seventeen years later, she realises that their relationship may have been abusive as he is accused of sexual misconduct by another former pupil.

THE LIZARD by Dugald Bruce-Lockhart (Muswell Press £12.99) UNDERGRADUATE Alistair decides to take himself to the Greek islands to recover from a broken heart. There he encounters a wily Australian who seduces him into a world of debauchery and murder that finally sees him having to flee from the police. Told with gusto, it never lets go.