CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH

A Dangerous Crossing by Rachel Rhys

On a summer’s day in 1939, Lily Shepherd boards the cruise liner Orontes, gaining assisted passage to escape her bleak English life for the shores of Australia. She leaves behind a family stricken once by war, and alarmed by the idea of another – but Lily is positive no such thing will happen. She is also positive that the trip will be an adventure, yet not even the personal tragedies of her past prepare her for all that will happen onboard the Orontes. Starting with the unsettling gentleness of an Agatha Christie novel – a beautiful ship, touches of luxury, characters with entertaining moustaches – danger and hatred soon ripple through the liner (and the book), as constant as waves. From her boorish and bigoted dining-mate, George, to the endearing yet mysterious brother and sister Helena and Edward, to her new Jewish friend Maria, to the dazzling Eliza and Max (a first-class couple escaping for some tourist-class fun), Lily cannot find her feet amongst these new people and experiences. It is all very glamorous, but, like Lily, who is running from pain, many on this ship are hiding a secret – and not everyone will make it ashore when the ship docks in Sydney.

This is not a story of brutal violence, but of the poison of words – how gossip, prejudice and doubt can have a deadly finality. Rhys, writing under a pseudonym, has so intricately entered the world of 1939 that every detail feels as real as the room you read in : the class politics, the architecture, the route, the clothes, all are as clear as the characters’ lives are murky. It is compelling period fiction, darkened by the bigotry that casually runs rampant, with offhand racism barely causing a spark against Lily’s generally upstanding moral code. As vivid as this narrow-mindedness is the excitement, the adventure, the way everything is new to Lily – from the people to the freedom to the sunsets and the clear sky. The story appears, in some ways, to be as light as a chiffon evening gown, but everyone is running from something, and nothing is sugary sweet except the facades of those around her.

Read this, and be surprised to find yourself on solid ground when you put it down.

NEW CRIME FICTION

Say Nothing by Brad Parks

Say you’re a book reviewer with a five-year-old child who you take swimming every week, and the night before your weekly swim, you pick up a book covered in abundant praise. However, it’s about a judge whose six-year-old children are kidnapped just as they go to their weekly swim, and the first few pages are so visceral, even while they retain some playfulness – because the main character, Scott Sampson, is immediately likeable. It turns out it’s just Far Too Real to read right now. Scott is told that his children will be returned to him – but only if the verdict he returns on the next day’s case is the one that the kidnappers want. What follows is the intense in-and-out-of-a-courtroom fight to save his children by a man who has been told that the only way to save them is to say nothing.

The Girl Who Was Taken by Charlie Donlea

One torrential North Carolina night, abducted teenager Megan McDonald escapes from the bunker her captor has left her in. When she is found, there is one question – where is Nicole Cutty, the other girl who vanished on the same night, two weeks ago? A year later, Megan has written a book, is doing the press tour – but still, her memory isn’t clear on everything that happened during those missing two weeks. And Livia Cutty, Nicole’s older sister, is towards the end of her Medical Examiner training, where she cares for every body she sees as if she is treating her own sister – and every time a body appears, she braces herself for it to be Nicole. When Livia autopsies a body initially thought to be a suicide – but then definitely a homicide – and discovers a connection to her sister, the two women band together to find out what really happened to Megan – and what happened to the girl who was never returned.

The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Victoria Cribb

Tying into two of this month’s themes –Iceland and lost children – the ever-bestselling Sigurdardottir lays the foundations for a new series for her fans, all involving The Children’s House, a haven for children who have experienced trauma. Such as, for example, Margrét, who just watched her mother violently murdered as she hid under the bed from the man who invaded her home. And Margrét’s two brothers, who have found themselves unwilling victims of someone who has not let go of a decades-old legacy. A legacy that broke up a family, ruined childhoods, and festered for years before culminating in murder – and that’s just the beginning.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

When scrappy kid Loo Hawley and her damaged father Samuel move back to Loo’s mother’s hometown, it takes a shot of violence that ends in a heroic feat for them to be anywhere near fitting in. Even Loo’s maternal family doesn’t want anything to do with them, and they keep themselves to themselves, despite the undercurrent of Loo’s childhood rage and everyone’s sudden interest in her father. On Samuel’s body lie the scars of twelve bullets, and while they are healing, the danger that caused them is not so far away – and revisiting each of those bullets may be the only way to their future. This is a literary masterpiece of past and present, pain and recovery.

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr

I can only assume Philip Kerr doesn’t sleep, since the man writes epic, glorious doorstopper espionage novels nearly faster than I can review them. Bernie Gunther returns in his non-linear way, popping up in France in 1956, approached by the secret police to kill someone who’s done him wrong. But Bernie isn’t one to kill people just because someone asked him to, even when they’ll kill him if he doesn’t follow through. What happens next is another Kerr classic, with Gunther wisecracking his way through all manner of assaults to his character and body, both in 1956 and back in late ’30s Nazi Germany, where a murder case at Hitler’s summer home will reach its tendrils out to Gunther all those years later

The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason (translated by Victoria Cribb)

In the Shadow District in the middle of the war, a young girl and her soldier boyfriend steal away behind the National Theatre for an illicit moment together. Instead of passion, what they find is a dead woman, strewn like rubbish on the ground. The case is never solved, but years later, in the present day, a 90-year-old man is found looking peacefully dead in his bed, clippings from the case in his side drawer. When the autopsy reveals he’s been smothered, retired and bored detective Konrad offers his old partner Marta help with the case, since the Shadow District has always lurked in the background of his own past. Darting from past to present, this Icelandic thriller is the first of a new series for the bestselling Indridason.

Also not to be missed this month:

• Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
• The Hidden Hours by Sara Foster
• The Fourteenth Letter by Claire Evans (Available 11 April)
• Domina by L.S. Hilton (Available 12 April)

Fiona Hardy