February
Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin
When Omar Yussef travels to New York for a UN conference, he is eager to see his youngest son, Ala. But the discovery of a decapitated corpse in his son's empty apartment catapults him into a police enquiry full of contradictions. In his desperation to clear Ala's name, Omar's investigations place him at the heart of a deadly international conspiracy.March
Margie Orford - Blood Rose
The gruesome murder of a homeless teenage boy suggests a methodical serial killer is at work in Walvis Bay, a depressed port, isolated in the vast sweep of the Namib Desert. As part of a cross-border policing initiative, Dr Clare Hart is sent to profile the possible killer. She works with Captain Tamar Damases, an astute local detective, who heads up the coastal town's Sexual Violence and Murder Unit. Clare is glad to be distracted from the implosion of what was a blossoming love affair with Captain Riedwaan Faizal, who turned out to be more married than she thought. As Riedwaan joins Clare, to help with the investigation and to try to salvage their relationship, she realises that the harbour holds more than rusting Russian fishing trawlers. It's not just their relationship that is in danger, but their lives.
April
Santiago Roncagliolo - Red April (Peruvian author)
A chilling, internationally acclaimed political thriller, Red April is a grand achievement in contemporary Latin American fiction, written by the youngest winner ever of the Alfaguara Prize—one of the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world—and translated from the Spanish by one of our most celebrated literary translators, Edith Grossman. It evokes Holy Week during a cruel, bloody, and terrifying time in Peru’s history, shocking for its corrosive mix of assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance—a war between grim, ideologically-driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency.
Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Until now he has lived a life in which nothing exceptionally good or bad has ever happened to him. But, inexplicably, he has been put in charge of a bizarre and horrible murder investigation. As it unfolds by propulsive twists and turns—full of paradoxes and surprises—Saldivar is compelled to confront what happens to a man and a society when death becomes the only certainty in life.
Stunning for its self-assured and nimble clarity of style—reminiscent of classic noir fiction—the inexorable momentum of its plot, and the moral complexity of its concerns, Red April is at once riveting and profound, informed as it is by deft artistry in the shaping of conflict between competing venalities. As the New York Times declares, “Lima is once again one of Latin America’s brightest literary scenes.”
May
Christobel Kent - A Fine and Private Place
The return of Sandro Cellini: ex-cop and private detective (Florence).
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