LATEST TITLES

MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER

by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Atlantic Books, £12.99 (ebook £5.63)

★★★★★

THIS is a funny book. Not laugh-out-loud, but more in its ability to trigger the feeling (particularly if you are blessed with sisters) that you can imagine getting a call like the one Korede gets from her sibling, Ayoola – and you would probably have to help if called upon.

Ayoola, the beauty, has stabbed her boyfriend – the third she’s killed – but conscientious, loyal Korede is well prepared for the clean-up job. What she’s not prepared for is the newly ‘bereaved’ Ayoola then taking an interest in her rather attractive doctor colleague, Tade.

It’s deftly written, as pointy and sleek as Ayoola’s blade, incrementally winding up the uneasiness, all the while making you question, along with Korede, the motives of the people you love.

Incredibly sharp, it’s a swift read that’ll be whirring around in your brain for some time.

THE DAKOTA WINTERS

by Tom Barbash, Scribner, £14.99 (ebook £7.99). Available January 10

★★★★★

FORMER journalist Tom Barbash grew up five blocks from the Dakota apartments in Manhattan, where John Lennon lived when he was assassinated, and has set his novel in the iconic building in the months running up to the murder.

The Dakota Winters follows the lives of the Winter family who are dealing with talk show host Buddy Winter’s return after a nervous breakdown.

Narrated by his son, back from a Peace Corp stint in Africa, having caught malaria, the novel deftly describes the milieu of Upper West Side intellectual celebrity the family moves in – including trips with the ex-Beatle – and excels in capturing a sense of time and place before gentrification and cable TV.

The heavy-handed foregrounding of Lennon’s death becomes wearing and the treatment of the assassination itself seems anticlimatic, but despite this, the book is an enjoyable insight into a lost world.