athlete by Scarlett Thomas (Scribner, £16.99)
Part thriller, part romantic suspense, Thomas’s latest novel begins in Cyprus, where 34-year-old Jay is literally on the run from someone who wants to kill him. Jay (not his real name) has a habit of fending off attackers: attempts on his life began at university, when a Japanese man arrived at his flat with a samurai sword. Since then people have been trying to assassinate him, the contract of his life is traded like a commodity in Bitcoin. Now his only apparent ally is the mysterious Ellie, although – given her track record – it’s quite possible that she’s also trying to alienate him. Just before the reader’s sense of intrigue turns to irritation, the action flashes back to Jay’s childhood in Kent, and the reasons gradually become clear in this bizarre, thrilling tale that takes in exorcisms, dictators, high finance, con artists and marathons.
Mad Man By Henning Mankell, translated by George Golding and Sarah de Senarclens (mountain leopard£25)
Written in the 1970s and first published in English, The Madman is set in a Swedish town in the late 1940s. The country’s wartime neutrality on paper is becoming divided: the city’s Nazi supporters want the past forgotten, but Communist supporters, angered by the internment, want a reckoning. When a letter to this effect appears in the local newspaper, the accused, including the director of the town’s sawmill, claim that newcomer Bertil Krauss is stirring up outrage for political purposes. When the sawmill burns down, Cross is blamed for that too, and the disintegration of the life he has tried to build leads to an existential crisis. An older Mankell might have been more concise, but the slow build toward inevitable disaster creates true emotional depth, and the theme of singling out, isolating, and punishing people for their opinions remains terrifyingly timely.
everything he didn’t say By Jane Casey (Hemlock, £16.99)
Casey’s latest standalone bestseller is her first book set in her native Ireland. In a remote cottage on the Mayo coast, a woman wakes up to find that her female companion has disappeared. Both the house and his clothes are covered in blood, and he claims to have no idea what happened – but the locals swear they only saw one woman, not two. Detectives Ben Butler and Liam Farrell – a charming pair who deserve a series of their own – are dispatched from Dublin to investigate. They discover that many things do not add up, that the key to the mystery may lie hidden in the past, and that more than one person may be missing. Casey not only makes great use of the backdrop of the West of Ireland, but also gives us a mysterious plot that takes us in the wrong direction and surprises us at every turn.
the spy and the snake By MJ Robotham (Aria, £18.99)
This second outing for Detective Maggie Flynn is set in 1968. Now widowed for five years and missing from surveillance, living behind a desk in MI5, she is given an off-the-books mission: go to Budapest and bring back boozehound Fitzroy Carver, a former defector who harbors a sentimental longing for the old country and exchanges vital information about a traitor in the service. Of course, there’s more to it than meets the eye, and Carver, who has insisted that the job of grooming her be done by a woman, proves strangely uncooperative… We’re definitely on the cozy end of the spy fiction spectrum here, with Maggie, an innocent foreigner and surprisingly concerned about the true nature of her vocation, getting more than her fair share of lucky breaks. More could be made of the period setting – James Bond and the Beatles are doing much of the heavy lifting – but the self-deprecating hero is a lovable character and his travels across Europe are a lot of fun.
murder at the end of the world by Akane Araki, Translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Pushkin£14.99)
Japanese author Araki’s riveting debut begins with the world in chaos when a devastating asteroid heads toward Earth. In just two months it will hit the island of Kyushu, and much of Asia’s population is focusing on getting as far away as possible, while others have opted to end their lives. Only 60 miles from the epicenter of the supposed earthquake, 23-year-old Haru, in a strange glimpse of normality, is learning to drive. Their instructor, Isagawa, is a former policeman whose overzealous pursuit of justice has led to his dismissal from the police force, and when the pair discover a murdered woman in the boot of the training car, not even the planet’s impending destruction will stop them from finding the killer. The two set out on a road trip to find answers, and the instructor-student relationship turns into a delightful odd-couple friendship as they deal with the chaos in this entertaining and thought-provoking mystery.
