Author Archives: Kat Hall

Jingle bells! Mrs. Peabody’s 2025 Christmas crime list

Posted on by Kat Hall
9

Mrs. Peabody’s 2025 Christmas list features the perfect gift for every crime lover in your life — including yourself!

Eight novels set in America, England, Norway, Scotland, Croatia and the former Yugoslavia, with a dash of China, Sweden and Ukraine. Please support indie publishers and local booksellers!

Red Water

Jurica Pavičić, Red Water, translated by Matt Robinson, Bitter Lemon Press 2025

Red Water is for lovers of international and historical crime fiction. Set in Croatia, the novel explores the fallout from a teenager’s disappearance over three long decades. Silva vanishes in September 1989, leaving her family confounded, not least because the police investigation reveals some unexpected sides to the seventeen-year-old’s life. Then comes the fall of communism and the Yugoslav Wars that will tear communities apart. It’s only once the conflict ends that the family has any chance of getting the answers they need.

This gripping and emotionally intelligent mystery shows the toll on the loved ones of those who disappear, while offering a nuanced history of Yugoslavia’s collapse and the remaking of Croatia. First-class stuff.

Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel, Bloomsbury 2025

Set in a future not far from now, The Dream Hotel is a speculative mystery that highlights the dangers of the technologies that supposedly serve us. Dr Sara Hussein is returning from a conference when she’s detained at Customs and Immigration, because she’s been deemed at risk of committing murder following data analysis of her dreams. Little did she know, when blithely agreeing to the terms of a sleep-saving device after the birth of her twins, that her dreams would be harvested and used against her. Now she’s being held at a SAFE-X facility that turns a profit from its detainees’ labour and is loath to let them go. It’s been 291 days — will Sara ever make it back to her family?

The Dream Hotel will make you think twice about ticking those innocent-looking ‘terms and conditions’ boxes, and illuminates the intersections of law enforcement and capitalism in uncompromising ways. The subject is highly relevant given the current situation in the States, where ICE is busy outsourcing raids on immigrant communities. A fantastic read from an author at the top of her game.

Elly Griffiths, The Postscript Murders and The Last Word, Quercus 2020 and 2024 

Time for some cosy crime! I absolutely loved this duo of bookish crime novels by Elly Griffiths. In The Postscript Murders, DS Harbinder Kaur sees no reason to suspect foul play when 90-year-old Peggy Smith is found dead at home. But Peggy’s carer Natalka isn’t so sure: Peggy thought she was being followed and did she really have the heart condition that apparently killed her? Together with Edwin, Peggy’s elderly neighbour, and Benedict, a former monk who serves coffee on the Shoreham seafront, Natalka sets about solving the mystery of Peggy’s death. And it turns out that their friend had a rather special skill. Then, in The Last Word, the trio investigate the demise of local romance author Melody Chambers.

Both novels are great reads — witty and entertaining, but with plenty of emotional depth. The three investigative characters bounce off one another nicely, and Natalka’s Ukrainian dynamism complements Edwin and Benny’s more cautious British approach. Crime fiction with lots of heart.

Jørn Lier Horst, The Lake, translated by Anne Bruce, Penguin 2025 

The latest William Wisting police procedural is a brilliant addition to the series. It’s high summer and Lake Farris is drying out for the first time in years. As the waters recede on opposite sides of the lake, there are disturbing discoveries relating to two cold cases: the remains of a young motorcyclist who went missing eight years ago, and the belongings of a girl who disappeared four years later. Wisting and his team, with fresh input from a Swedish detective, begin to reinvestigate.

This crime novel goes to some quite dark places, but is never salacious or gratuitous in tone. Wisting represents the very best of policing: he is methodical, dogged, and dedicated to securing justice for his victims. His methods have also moved with the times, so we’re given fascinating insights into the latest technologies used to secure vital breakthroughs.

R. F. Kuang, Yellowface, HarperCollins 2024

Rebecca Kuang is an incredibly exciting writer, with the talent and courage to pull off ideas that many other authors could not. In Yellowface, obscure writer June Hayward witnesses the death of her friend and rival Athena Liu in a freak accident. In the interval between dialling 911 and the arrival of the emergency services, June steals the book manuscript lying on the dead woman’s desk, and later revises and passes it off as her own. Finally, ‘June Song’ has the fame and critical adulation she’s always dreamed of and seems to have no problem justifying her actions to herself. But someone may be about to expose her. How can June save herself from being cancelled and losing her precious career?

Yellowface is a razor-sharp dissection of the publishing industry and the crazily competitive world that aspiring writers have to navigate. Just how far are they (or any of us) willing to go to make it? Clever and witty, and a genuinely insightful look at the publishing process.

Maggie O’Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Hachette 2009

Top-notch literary crime. Iris Lockhart gets a letter telling her that her great-aunt Esme Lennox is about to be released from an Edinburgh psychiatric unit. Iris has never heard of Esme, and her grandmother Kitty, who is slipping into dementia, seems unable or unwilling to help. But what could Esme have done to deserve a lifetime in an institution? And why the complete silence about her within the family?

This is by far the oldest novel on my list, but I read it this year and was simply blown away. I counted at least four major crimes within its pages, and the astonishing thing is that none of them — even in combination — could be said to be remotely unique. On finishing it I felt quite shaken, because it really isn’t that long since ‘transgressive’ women could be so easily ‘put away’. Sobering and sad, but incredibly good — and Esme herself is unforgettable. O’Farrell is a truly fantastic writer.

Jess Kidd, Murder at Gulls Nest, Faber 2025

Murder at Gulls Nest is the first in Jess Kidd’s ‘Nora Breen Investigates’ series and is set in the 1950s seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, a place of boarding houses, terrible food, and recuperation after long years of war. Nora was once Sister Agnes of Christ at the High Dallow Carmelite Monastery, but when former nun Frieda goes missing, Nora feels compelled to find her and takes a room at the Gulls Nest boarding house where the woman last lived. Here, Nora meets the ragtag assortment of Frieda’s fellow lodgers, and starts using her curiosity and sharp intelligence to get to the bottom of the mystery. When one of the lodgers is found dead, Nora knows that something is seriously amiss. Kidd’s use of language is sublime, and the loyal and resourceful Nora Breen is a delight. Cosy, but with an uncompromising edge.

Wishing you all a lovely, relaxing and bookish Christmas!

Spring smörgåsbord! Swiss, Korean, British, Spanish & American crime fiction

Posted on by Kat Hall
14

Spring is springing here in Wales, with pink blossom, white garlic, and bluebells emerging into the warmth. It does the soul good to be out in the garden and parks, or down on the beach.

I’ve been enjoying an eclectic range of crime fiction recently, including some longer, more ambitious reads.

Hunkeler's Secret

Hansjörg Schneider, Hunkeler’s Secret (Switzerland), tr. by Astrid Freuler, Bitter Lemon Press 2025

First line: Peter Hunkeler, former inspector with the Basel City criminal investigation department, now retired, woke up and didn’t know where he was.

I reckon Hunkeler’s Secret, the latest in the ‘Inspector Hunkeler’ series, is my favourite thus far. While in hospital recovering from an operation, Hunkeler finds himself sharing a room with Stephan Fankhauser, the gravely ill former head of the Basel Volksbank. One morning, Hunkeler wakes to the news that Fankhauser died in the night. But was it a natural death? Or did a groggy Hunkeler witness something untoward being done to his fellow patient in the wee small hours? After his discharge from hospital, the retired police inspector starts to investigate in his dogged, somewhat grumpy way. There’s also a new family relationship to explore, a wayward goat, and lots of good food.

One aspect of the ‘Hunkeler’ series I particularly like is its geographical setting. There’s the Swiss city of Basel on the one hand, where Hunkeler spent his working life and has a flat, and rural Alsace on the other, where he owns a little house. You get a real sense of the proximity of Switzerland, France and Germany to one another, with characters continually criss-crossing borders and speaking Swiss-German, Alsatian (an Alemannic dialect) and French. I love that Astrid Freuler integrates nuggets of the original languages into her excellent English translation, which gives readers an enhanced sense of the multiculturalism of the area. The region also has a complex territorial history, which plays a role in the resolution of this knotty Hunkeler case.

Jess Kidd, Murder at Gulls Nest (1950s England), Faber 2025

First line: The woman climbs the hill, a favourable wind behind her.

Murder at Gulls Nest is the first in Jess Kidd’s new ‘Nora Breen Investigates’ series, and is set in the 1950s seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, a place of boarding houses, terrible food, and recalibration after long years of war.

For thirty years, Nora was Sister Agnes of Christ, a dutiful nun at the High Dallow Carmelite Monastery. But when former nun Frieda goes missing, Nora feels compelled to find her, and takes a room at the Gulls Nest boarding house, where the young woman was last based. Here, Nora meets the ragtag assortment of Frieda’s fellow lodgers, and starts using her curiosity and sharp intelligence to get to the bottom of the mystery. When one of the lodgers is found dead, Nora knows that something is seriously amiss.

Readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of Jess Kidd’s work, especially her brilliant novel Himself. Murder at Gulls Nest is written in a slightly softer, slightly cosier style, but retains plenty of bite. As ever, Kidd’s use of language is sublime, and I’m looking forward to meeting the resourceful, irrepressible Nora Breen again in future.

Mirinae Lee, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster (North Korea and South Korea), Virago 2023

First line: The idea came to me while I was going through my divorce.

When Grandma Mook tells the obituarist at the Golden Sunset retirement home the story of her life — which spans a century of Korea’s history — there’s a suspicion that the old lady is just a fantasist. But: what if Mook Miran is telling the truth and she’s a trickster of the highest order? What if she genuinely was a murderer, terrorist, identity thief and spy?

A major theme of this novel is survival. Mook Miran’s eight lives, which we’re told in non-chronological order, illuminate the terrible hardships women faced in Japanese-ruled Korea (1910-1945) and later in North Korea, and pose the question of what it takes to survive such incredibly adverse circumstances. Part of the answer lies in the figure of the trickster, who survives and advances through nimble thinking and resolute action — even if the latter is viewed as a crime and comes at a price. Sparky, resilient and whip-smart, Mook Miran is a character you won’t easily forget, and the portrait she paints of Korea’s history is disturbing and fascinating in equal measure.

Andrew O’Hagan, Caledonian Road, Faber 2024

First line: Tall and sharp at fifty-two, Campbell Flynn was a tinderbox in a Savile Row suit, a man who believed his childhood was so far behind him that all its threats had vanished.

Caledonian Road, or ‘the Cally’, runs for a mile and a half through the London Borough of Islington. Like many roads in London, it takes you from economically deprived areas to obscenely wealthy ones in what feels like the blink of an eye.

Andrew O’Hagan harnesses the reality of this social divide in his powerful state-of-the-nation novel by creating an illuminating chain of connections: from Milo Mangasha, a tech-savvy student from a Cally council estate, and his uni professor Campbell Flynn, who lives in a posh townhouse with his aristo-therapist wife further up the road, to Sir William Byre, Flynn’s public school pal who’s up to his neck in dodgy deals, and Russian oligarch Aleksandr Bykov and son Yuri, who runs a very modern criminal enterprise and socialises with Campbell’s children. And that’s just a fraction of the cast!

Strap in for 600 pages of brilliant storytelling featuring utterly believable characters and razor-sharp social dissection. In particular, the novel holds up a mirror to the hypocrisies of well-heeled Londoners, and the establishment’s willingness to turn a blind eye to corruption and outright criminality. But it’s not without sympathy for its beleaguered central character, Flynn, whose spectacular mid-life crisis may offer a redemption of sorts, and has much to tell us about the perils of becoming alienated from your true self.

Teresa Solana, Black Storms (Spain), tr. by Peter Bush, Corylus Press 2024

First line: The man who was about to commit murder left home at six thirty, after telling his girlfriend Mary he’d business to see to and checking his car keys were in his pocket.

Whenever I read Teresa Solana’s work, I always come away with an appreciation of her highly distinctive voice, which blends a wry humour with steely social satire. Above all, there’s a wonderful energy to her writing, which seems to feed off the verve of Barcelona, the city where many of her crime stories are set. Her long-time translator, Peter Bush, captures all of these elements with aplomb in his English translations.

Black Storms introduces us to Norma Forester, Deputy Inspector of the Catalan police, who is tasked with solving the murder of an elderly professor at the University of Barcelona. No one can quite understand why a terminally ill man should be targeted in this way, but Norma’s experience and expertise gradually uncover the truth.

Equal attention is paid to Norma’s eccentric family, and they are great fun to hang out with. Norma is the granddaughter of an English member of the National Brigades, and the women of the family, all named after opera heroines, are a force of nature. I particularly like the way Solana shows Norma’s efforts to balance her family life and work, which the latter does in a messy, imperfect, but loving way.

The Residence, Shondaland / Netflix 2025

Last but not least, a very fun Netflix crime series: The Residence, which stars Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, a consultant with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and Randall Park as Edwin Park, an FBI Special Agent. They are called to the White House after a murder is committed during a state dinner for the Australian prime minister, and tasked with figuring out which of the 157 suspects is the murderer — including the fictional president and his husband.

Aduba is excellent as the bird-watching, unerringly brilliant sleuth. It’s really her show, backed by a superb ensemble cast, and the whole thing has a Sherlock-Holmes-by-way-of-Wes-Anderson vibe. It also throws a light on the lives of the permanent staff at the White House, who of course stay in place while presidents come and go. Very sharp, very witty and very entertaining.

A hard rain’s a-gonna fall… Reading as empowerment & solace

Posted on by Kat Hall
19

This isn’t a normal kind of post, because this isn’t a normal kind of day.

The inauguration of the new U.S. president will affect everyone to some degree in the coming months and years. Understandably, it’s making many of us feel extremely anxious, either because we live in America, because we have family and friends in America, or because we know our history and see right-wing forces on the rise around the world. Seeing those billionaire tech bros scrambling to get on board, positively encouraging the spread of disinformation, isn’t helping either. It all feels quite grim.

So here’s a small contribution: a two-part reading list whose aim is to empower or provide solace — whatever your need. In troubled times, books can be a lifeline.

EMPOWERMENT

There’s a reason why certain novels get banned by repressive regimes. Words and stories are powerful. They give us knowledge, courage and hope. They show us that other futures are possible. They provide us with a moral compass. They illuminate the methods repressive regimes use to control others. They give us concrete strategies for navigating tough times. They are survival manuals. They facilitate resistance.

Many also explore the theme of criminality, because when repressive regimes take power, they tend to redefine notions of crime. Things that are accepted by a true democracy — such as being a member of an opposition party or organization, working as a union official, voicing criticism of the government, identifying as LGBTI, belonging a particular ethnicity or religion, or (for women) simply choosing what clothes to wear — can quickly become criminalized. Once that happens, the state can start punishing citizens in the courts for ‘crimes’ ranging from ‘treason’ to ‘undermining state order’ to being ‘immodestly dressed’. And because the state is weaponizing the law to enforce its own power rather than upholding the law in good faith, the state itself becomes criminal. It commits crimes against the people it is supposed to serve.

Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (Penguin 2019) and The Handmaid’s Tale (Vintage 2017 [1985])

Where else to start than Margaret Atwood’s iconic dystopian novels about the theocratic Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, which draw on elements from repressive regimes throughout history. These novels show how quickly a democracy can fall and be replaced by a totalitarian regime; how individuals are given terrible choices to co-opt them into policing others on the regime’s behalf; how things as universal as reading or loving can swiftly become criminalized; how acts of resistance are always possible, but require incredible courage and determination; and how even the most repressive of regimes can fall. The TV adaptation with Elisabeth Moss is stunning. Note: The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most frequently banned books in America.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy (Fourth Estate 2009, 2012, 2020)

Hilary Mantel’s extraordinary novels explore the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540), fixer extraordinaire to King Henry VIII. We’re given an intimate view of what it’s like to spend years in the inner circle of a mercurial, murderous, absolute monarch, and the impossibility of remaining untouched by the crimes you commit in his name. A cautionary tale that demonstrates how serving morally bankrupt people tends to come at a high price. They will dump you the minute you outlast your usefulness.

C. J. Sansom’s absorbing ‘Shardlake’ crime series is set in the same historical period, and sees London lawyer Matthew Shardlake cross paths with Cromwell in the first two books, Dissolution and Dark Fire. The Tudor period was a truly terrifying time to live, not least because of the brutality of its criminal justice system.

Sarah Gailey, Upright Women Wanted (tor.com 2020)

From the past to the future: Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted takes place in an American Southwest that’s a few years into a totalitarian regime. Young Esther stows away in a travelling Librarians’ book wagon to escape marriage to a man once betrothed to Beatriz, her best friend. Beatriz also happens to have been her secret lover and has just been executed for possessing resistance materials. This is a hard-hitting but hopeful tale of courage and resistance, which features some truly impressive and subversive librarians. As we all know, librarians rock.

Paul Lynch, Prophet Song (Oneworld 2023) 

In this speculative novel, which won the 2023 Booker Prize, Ireland has recently been taken over by a totalitarian regime. At the start of the book, Larry Stack, a trade unionist and deputy head teacher, is disappeared by the secret police while attending a protest rally: his professional activities and actions are now deemed criminal by the state. His wife Eilish is left to hold the family together in increasingly fraught circumstances. The lesson here is how quickly things can unravel and how costly hesitation can be. Eilish is in shock and torn by conflicting needs — to help her husband, to care for her kids and elderly dad — but staying on rather than getting some of the family out while she has the chance may prove a mistake. Always be prepared; always have a plan.

KAOS, Netflix 2024

A wild reimagining of Greek mythology, whose stellar cast includes Jeff Goldblum, KAOS has a lot to teach us about how repressive regimes tick. The gods rule the world with an iron hand from Mount Olympus, not just because they’re powerful, but because they’ve duped humans into believing that obedience will secure them a glorious afterlife. But what if that deal is an elaborate swindle? A ragtag band of individuals, including recently deceased Riddy (Eurydice), are about to find out. Once again, resistance is shown to require huge amounts of courage and sacrifice. On the flip side: no power is monolithic, any regime can be toppled, every charlatan is unmasked in the end.

SOLACE

British commentator Ian Dunt has some wise words about retaining our sanity over the next four years:

You can adopt a system of largely ignoring the chaff and focusing on the pertinent actions. You can make sure that you have time away from the news, so it does not consume you. You can focus your efforts on what you can change, rather than what you cannot.

I think this is really good advice. Don’t ‘live inside the news’, as Oliver Burkeman puts it, do set aside time to enjoy reading or knitting or hiking or playing the banjo or whatever your thing is, and do take regular small actions that make a concrete difference. These might include writing to your MP or a newspaper, making a donation to a progressive cause, or getting involved in your local community. Above all, don’t get sucked into social media spats designed to rob you of your time and energy and peace. Focus on self-care and positive action instead.

I’m doing a lot of what I call ‘respite reading’, because sometimes you really do need to give your head a break. This tends to involve crime novels that contain plenty of wisdom and humour and heart, and I’m incredibly grateful that they exist.

What do you read to get away from it all?

Up to snow good! Mrs. Peabody’s top crime of 2024

Posted on by Kat Hall
10

Here is Mrs. Peabody’s top crime list for 2024 — featuring some of my very best reads from the last 12 months (though not necessarily published this year). The books are set in America, Australia, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, and Spain. 

Perfect gifts for the festive season! Treat others! Treat yourself! Support indie publishers and local booksellers!

Antti Tuomainen, The Burning Stones, tr. from the Finnish by David Hackston (Orenda Books 2024, 271 pp.)

Setting: Rural Finland

First lines: Aaaaahhhhhhh. The steam spread over his skin like a hot, damp blanket, and flowed evenly and satisfyingly across his whole body.

Set in Puhtijärvi, a Finnish village nestled between a forest and a lake, The Burning Stones pays homage to the key role of the sauna in the nation’s wellbeing… whilst also cheerfully turning it into a crime scene.

When Ilmo Räty is found dead in the ashes of his sauna, the rest of his colleagues at Steam Devil, a leading sauna stove manufacturer, fall under suspicion. This is especially problematic for top saleswoman Anni Korpinen, as one of the police investigators holds an elk-related grudge against her family and the murderer seems to be doing their best to frame her. So: not only must Anni deal with her own mid-life crisis, she must also turn detective and ID the murderer before it’s too late. Hilarious and heart-warming in equal measure, The Burning Stones illuminates the rituals of the sauna and the delights of rural Finland. As ever, translator David Hackston does a fantastic job of conveying Antti Tuomainen’s distinctive dark humour and his eye for the idiosyncratic detail of everyday life. A delight. 

Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, Canongate 2023

Setting: Penang and Kuala Lumpur, 1910 (now modern-day Malaysia)

First lines: A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.

Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors is a wonderfully absorbing and multi-layered historical novel. It imagines how the final tale of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1926 Casuarina Tree — ‘The Letter’, based on the real Ethel Proudlock murder case — might have come about, while the author visits his old friend Robert Hamlyn. Told from the perspectives of Willie and Lesley, Robert’s wife, the novel brilliantly evokes Penang and Kuala Lumpur in the 1910s and 1920s.  See the full review here.

Antoine Laurain, French Windows, tr. from the French by Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Gallic Books 2024, 174 pp.)

Setting: Paris, France.

First lines: In the middle of the unevenly cobbled courtyard stands a tall tree. No one has ever quite determined its species; some people in the building see a wild cherry, others see an oak, though it has never produced an acorn.

Analyst Doctor Faber has a new patient with an unusual problem. Nathalia Guitry is a photographer who finds herself unable to take photos. The reason, we soon discover, is that she accidentally photographed a murder, leaving her understandably traumatised. As a way into therapy, Doctor Faber suggests Nathalia writes about the people she observes from her apartment window. Going up floor by floor, she pens detailed portraits of her neighbours, all of whom are intriguing in their own right. But how much of what she writes is true? And what will the story of the fifth floor reveal?

A Parisian Rear Window that offers insights into therapy, along with lashings of acerbic humour and Gallic charm, French Windows is the perfect stocking filler. Hats off to Louise Rogers Lalaurie for gifting us such a sparkling translation of this novel.

Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman, Corsair 2021, 464 pp.

Setting: Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota, 1953

First lines: Thomas Wazhashk removed his thermos from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside his scuffed briefcase. His work jacket went on the chair, his lunch box on the cold windowsill.

Louise Erdrich, one of my favourite writers, brings the 1950s community of the Turtle Mountain Reservation to life in this highly absorbing, polyphonic novel.

The Night Watchman‘s two main strands each have a criminal dimension. Patrice ‘Pixie’ Paranteau is a young woman whose work at the reservation’s factory allows her to provide for her mother and siblings. But her sister Vera recently vanished after moving to Minnesota, and Pixie now urgently needs to find her and her baby. At the same time, factory night watchman and Chippewa Council member Thomas Wazhashk is becoming seriously concerned about Resolution 108, which is due to go before Congress before too long. Styled as an ’emancipation’ bill, 108 threatens to abolish the official status of tribes as a means of appropriating yet more Native American land and rights — a wave of state-sanctioned violence that Thomas must somehow try to counter. 

The Night Watchman is at times very hard-hitting, but portrays the Turtle Mountain community with humour and warmth. While never sentimental, it shows the power of determination and grass-roots organisation (the character of Thomas is based on the author’s own grandfather), and the resilience and resourcefulness of women like Pixie. The novel won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Highly recommended!

Jørn Lier Horst, Snow Fall, tr. from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce (Penguin 2024, 432 pp.)

Setting: Norway and Spain

First line: The email appeared on his screen at 15.37 on Friday 8 December.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a huge fan of Jørn Lier Horst’s ‘William Wisting’ novels — consistently thoughtful and intelligent police procedurals that use their crime narratives to illuminate various facets of modern society.

Snow Fall sees Wisting being asked to investigate the disappearance of Norwegian woman Astri Arctander — a member of an online crime forum looking into the recent murder of backpacker Ruby Thompson in the town of Palamós in Catalonia. Wisting’s investigation takes him from Norway to Spain, and includes navigating a relationship between himself as a police representative and the modern-day online detectives, whose information is gathered outside of the law but may nevertheless be useful. By the way, the handle of one of the online sleuths is intriguing: a certain ‘Mrs Peabody’ who seems to know her crime fiction! The author has not yet confirmed or denied the inspiration for this character…

Snow Fall is an absorbing police procedural by a writer at the height of his powers, brought to us in style by Lier Horst’s long-standing translator, Anne Bruce. Quality holiday reading!

Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait, Tinder Press 2022, 438 pp.

Setting: Sixteenth-century Italy

First line: Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir.

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait was one of my star reads of the year. The author takes her inspiration from a snippet from history — the mysteriously brief life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici (1545-1561) — and Robert Browning’s 1842 poem ‘My Last Duchess’, which suggests that Lucrezia was murdered by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara. The resulting novel is an outstanding example of literary crime — ingenious but with plenty of heart. Read my full review here.

Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road, Viper 2020, 416 pp.

Setting: Rural South Australia

First line: On a Monday morning in September, three weeks into the job, the new cop at Tiverton took a call from his sergeant: shots fired on Bitter Wash Road.

Bitter Wash Road is the first in Garry Disher’s ‘Constable Hirsch’ series. Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen has recently found himself exiled from the city to a one-man cop shop in ‘wheat and wool country, three hours north of Adelaide’ — punishment for having dared to be a whistle-blower during a previous case. In Tiverton, the metropolitan cop must quickly adapt to rural policing — which is not always as quiet as one might think — and deal with the hostility of his new boss, the distinctly unenlightened Sergeant Kropp. Oh, and there’s likely to be a whole lot of extra fallout from Hirsch’s past too. 

This is an outstanding novel with great characterisation and a thrilling plot from the three-time winner of the prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel. I have the next in the series, Peace, lined up as one of my holiday reads.  

Hideo Yokoyama, The North Light, tr. from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai (RiverRun 2023, 408 pp.)  

Setting: Tokyo, Osaka and around Mount Asama, Japan

First line: In Osaka it had been raining since early morning.

The North Light is probably best described as a mystery and a meditation on middle age. Minoru Aose is a divorced architect who fell on hard times after Japan’s economic bubble burst in the 1990s. Although he now works for a small, reputable architectural firm, he seems to be largely out of touch with his feelings and unclear about what he wants from life.

Aose’s biggest achievement to date is the Yoshino house, a prizewinning residence near Mount Asama. His brief was to design a house that he himself would want to live in, and it is built to showcase the north light he loves. The chance discovery that the house is empty and the Yoshino family has vanished unsettles him greatly: he is both worried for the family and fearful that they hated the house. We accompany Aose as he unravels this mystery, a journey that reveals facets of his unusual childhood; the work of (real) German architect Bruno Taut, who fled Germany for Japan during the Nazi era; Japanese work culture; and the interplay of Japanese nature and architecture. Quietly gripping and beautifully translated by Louise Heal Kawai, this novel subverts the crime genre in extremely interesting ways.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas / Hanukkah / Happy Holidays!

In an unusually glamorous fashion, I’m just about to hop on a plane, so will catch up with your comments in a couple of days 🙂

Disappearing into thin air: Sarah Ward’s The Vanishing Act (Wales) and Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake (USA)

Posted on by Kat Hall
2

Sarah Ward, The Vanishing Act, Canelo Crime 2024

First line: Elsa drove her car down the rutted road, the suspension on her ancient Fiesta groaning as it was thrown from grassy mound to pothole.

Sarah Ward’s The Vanishing Act is part of the ‘Mallory Dawson’ series set in Wales, where I happen to live, and I’ve very much enjoyed seeing places I know and love depicted in her gripping mysteries — Eldey (Caldey) Island, St Davids with its stunning Gothic cathedral, and now the ancient Brechfa (Glyn Cothi) forest in Carmarthenshire.

Sarah has a real gift for creating compelling crime scenarios. In The Vanishing Act, young Elsa goes to do her weekly clean of a holiday cottage deep in the forest, only to find it empty. But the kettle is still boiling on the Aga, half-made sandwiches are lying on the kitchen countertop and a chair is overturned. The family renting the cottage clearly left in a hurry, but why? Elsa phones Mallory to seek advice, who in turn contacts DI Harri Evans. He remembers being called out to a disturbing, supposedly supernatural event at the cottage many years earlier. Could there be a link? Mallory is tasked with digging into past events, and when the disappearance turns into possible murder, she finds herself back on the police team as a civilian investigator.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Vanishing Act. I love the characterization of the down-to-earth Mallory, who is rethinking her life after leaving the police and a divorce, and whose investigative skills and courage are an asset to every case. There’s also something of a Scandi feel about the isolated forest setting and its other-worldly vibe — a place where it pays to be wary of the darkness lurking in its depths. A gripping, satisfying read.

Interested in Welsh crime? Then the article ‘Ten killer crime novels set in Wales’ is for you!

Laura Lippman, Lady in the Lake, Faber & Faber 2019

First lines: I saw you once. I saw you and you noticed me because you caught me looking at you, seeing you.

I stumbled across this trailer yesterday for the new TV crime drama Lady in the Lake, starring Nathalie Portman as Maddie Schwarz. It looks like it could be an amazing adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel.

I read Lady in the Lake last year and enjoyed it on a number of levels. Set in 1960s Baltimore, it’s a crime novel exploring the disappearances of Tessie, a Jewish girl, and Cleo, a Black woman, but is also a story of female emancipation. 37-year-old Maddie Schwarz ditches her comfortable but dull existence as an affluent Jewish wife, convinced that there has to be more to life. Her chance involvement in the discovery of a body sets her on a path to becoming an investigative journalist in the male-dominated newsrooms of the city.

Drawing on real cases and figures, Lady in the Lake is also an exploration of the social fabric of the city — of class and gender and ethnic tensions — and sets itself apart by giving space to multiple voices within the community, not least Cleo herself. It’s what I would describe as an ambitious social crime novel that is maybe slightly too ambitious at times. Ideal, then, for a long-form, seven-part TV adaptation that will allow the material to breathe.

The first two episodes of Lady in the Lake air on 19 July on Apple TV. 

Mrs Peabody is away for the next month or so, but has packed a goodly assortment of crime, ranging from Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Zadie Smith’s The Fraud to Janet Evanovich’s Seven Up (I’m a big Stephanie Plum fan). What’s on your summer bookshelf?

‘Til death do us part’: Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (Medici Italy), Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (France), Only Murders in the Building (USA)

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Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait (Tinder Press 2022)

First line: Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir.

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait is one of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read. O’Farrell takes her inspiration from a snippet from history — the mysteriously brief life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici (1545-1561) — and Robert Browning’s 1842 poem ‘My Last Duchess’, which suggests that Lucrezia was murdered by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara. The resulting novel is an outstanding example of literary crime.

Figuring out whether or not Lucrezia was murdered involves a deep dive into the sixteenth-century court life of Medici Florence and the paradoxical status of aristocratic girls like Lucrezia. In many ways ultra-privileged, they also led incredibly constrained lives, their primary role being to boost the status of their families through advantageous matches and the production of heirs. Pawns in the power plays of their fathers and husbands, they had very little say in their own destinies. Lucrezia finds solace in her love of drawing and painting — just one of the ways O’Farrell brings this unusual, spirited young woman to life as she seeks to survive her highly dangerous marriage.

The Marriage Portrait is one of my books of the year thus far — I loved its ingenuity, its clever construction and its heart. Highly recommended.

Justine Triet (dir.), Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Many thanks to blog reader Vicky, who recommended this Palme d’Or winner to me. As it happens, Anatomy of a Fall complements The Marriage Portrait perfectly, for it also explores a marriage, albeit one with a very different power dynamic. Here, wife Sandra Voyter appears to have the upper hand: she’s a hugely successful author, while her husband, Samuel Maleski, struggles to write and is the primary carer for their visually impaired son Daniel. When Samuel is found dead outside their isolated Grenoble chalet, the police suspect Sandra of having been involved. Did Samuel fall from the window of the attic room he was renovating? Or was he pushed? And just how reliable a witness is Sandra, the consummate and highly inventive storyteller?

The film soon turns into a gripping legal drama, and I found myself fascinated by the depiction of French court procedure, which enables the defendant to be questioned alongside witnesses (an approach that creates illuminating ‘dialogue’ between different witness statements). There’s top-notch acting here from Sandra Hüller (Sandra) and Milo Machado Graner (Daniel). Border collie Messi, who plays family pet Snoop, is also a genuine star, and left Cannes with the coveted Palme Dog 🙂

I’ve featured the German film poster above. I especially like the German title Anatomie eines Falls because the noun ‘der Fall’ can variously mean ‘fall’, ‘event’ or investigative ‘case’. The original French title is Anatomie d’une chute. ‘Chute’ also has a range of evocative meanings, such as ‘fall’, ‘downfall’ and ‘collapse’.

Only Murders in the Building, Season 1 (Disney+ 2021)

I’m late to the party, but am enjoying the antics of amateur sleuths Charles, Oliver and Mabel as they look into the murder of one of their neighbours in the affluent Arconia Building on New York’s Upper West Side. The characterization of the three leads — played by Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short respectively — is sparky and wry. So is the production, which gleefully harnesses podcast conventions: for what else would a fading actor, washed-up theatre director and aspiring interior designer do these days other than create a podcast called Only Murders in the Building? It’s all very meta, and despite a few goofy moments that stretch credulity, is an entertaining way to unwind at the end of a long day. There are cameos from the likes of Sting, Tina Fey and Jane Lynch, and the latest season features Meryl Streep. Great fun.

Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors (Penang & Kuala Lumpur)

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This week: an absorbing historical novel generously leavened with crime.

Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, Canongate 2023

First lines: A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.

Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors is a wonderfully satisfying and multi-layered historical novel. It transmutes the final tale from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1926 Casuarina Tree — ‘The Letter’, based on the Ethel Proudlock murder case — into gleaming literary gold.

It’s 1921. English writer Willie Somerset Maugham is staying at his old friend Robert Hamlyn’s home, the beautiful Cassowary House in Penang. Robert warns his wife Lesley that Willie is notorious for mining everyone he meets for his writing, often depicting them in scandalous detail in his books. But we soon learn that Willie is hiding a secret of his own: his marriage is in disarray, and his secretary and travel companion Gerald Haxton has long been his lover, at a time when homosexuality is still deemed a crime.

Told from the perspectives of Willie and Lesley, the novel focuses extensively on the Hamlyns’ lives in 1910 and 1921, and paints a vivid portrait of Penang, whose unique culture is shaped by Malay, Indian, Chinese, Siamese and European influences.

Two 1910 events particularly pique Willie’s authorial interest: Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen’s visit to Penang to raise funds for his cause, and the Kuala Lumpur trial of Mrs. Ethel Proudlock for the murder of a man rumoured to have been her lover. Lesley had personal connections to both, and she and Robert also have secrets she’s guarded in the intervening eleven years. So just how wise is it to confide in Willie, rumoured to have honed his information-gathering skills as a spy in the First World War?

I absolutely loved this novel’s depiction of the writer’s sometimes nefarious art; how complex relationships evolve over time; and the ways individuals seek to survive and/or liberate themselves from repressive social norms. The House of Doors also offers an intriguing new take on the Proudlock case, adding a significant element to Maugham’s Casuarina Tree story.

The House of Doors was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023.

C.J. Sansom’s Tombland (1549 England), Suki Kim’s The Interpreter (South Korea/USA), Marcie R. Rendon’s Girl Gone Missing (1970s America)

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C.J. Sansom, Tombland, Mantle 2018

First lines: I had been in my chambers at Lincoln’s Inn when the messenger came from Master Parry, asking me to attend him urgently. I wondered what might be afoot.

I was extremely sad to hear that historical crime writer C.J. Sansom had passed away.

Sansom is, of course, best known for his ‘Matthew Shardlake’ series, featuring the eponymous lawyer-sleuth during the turbulent reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. The final novel in the series, Tombland, takes Shardlake to Norwich in Norfolk, which was England’s prosperous second city at the time. Sent to investigate the murder of Edith Boleyn, a distant relative of the young Princess Elizabeth, Shardlake finds himself caught up in Kett’s Rebellion, a large-scale uprising against wealthy landowners who were appropriating and enclosing ‘common land’, leading to a marked rise in hunger and poverty.

At 880 pages, Tombland is an ambitious and highly absorbing crime novel. If you’ve ever visited Norwich, you’ll immediately recognise many of its locations, such as the 900-year-old Market Square on Gentleman’s Walk and the equally historic Norwich Cathedral. My good friend Harriet informs me that there are now Tombland tours of the city, which sound very appealing indeed.

In addition to a wonderful sense of place, the novel offers a fascinating depiction of Kett’s Rebellion of 1549, which, as Sansom notes in an illuminating afterword, is often overlooked by historians. I found many of the issues he highlights via the uprising — such as the yawning gap between rich and poor, and the devastating effects of a cost-of-living crisis — to be very relevant today. A key difference now, of course, is that ordinary people have the right to vote out governments they don’t like. In fact, the novel could easily be read as an extended argument for the benefits of democracy, which, when working smoothly, enables a transfer of power without the need for brutal conflicts like the Battle of Dussindale.

Here in the UK, you just need to make sure that you are registered to vote (deadline 18 June) and have a valid photo ID when casting your vote in the up-coming election on 4 July 🙂

Suki Kim, The Interpreter, Picador 2003

First line: Cigarette at 9 a.m. is a sure sign of desperation.

Author Suki Kim moved with her family from South Korea to America at the age of thirteen. What it means to navigate this kind of dual heritage forms the starting point for The Interpreter, which can be classified as off-kilter literary crime novel. It depicts an immigrant story that’s a long, long way from the American Dream.

The interpreter in question is 29-year-old Suzy Park, who seems to be leading a largely invisible and emotionally shuttered life in New York. We soon learn that her parents were murdered at their store five years earlier and that the case has never been solved.

While acting as an interpreter in a legal case, Suzy realises that the Korean store owner being questioned on suspicion of breaching employment laws once worked for her parents. Exploiting Mr Lee’s lack of English and the Assistant DA’s lack of Korean, she starts asking questions about her parents’ murder and receives some disquieting answers in return. These set her on the path to uncovering not just the circumstances of the crime, but all kinds of buried truths about her family, and especially her elusive sister Grace.

The Interpreter is a highly interesting novel — an unsparing exploration of Korean-American experiences as well as the impact of generational and culture gaps. The latter are effectively shown in an early scene, when Suzy explains how she translates answers given by first-generation immigrants who use radically different cultural codes from the American lawyers questioning them:

What she possesses is an ability to be in two places at once. She can hear a word and separate its literal meaning from its connotation. […] Languages are not logical. Thus an interpreter must translate word for word and yet somehow manipulate the breadth of language to bridge the gap.

Although Suzy’s identity as an interpreter is central to the text, by the end we are left wondering whether The Interpreter of the title might be someone else entirely. A very clever and well-constructed novel by a fascinating author. You can read more about Suki Kim’s work as a writer and investigative journalist here.

Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing, Soho Press 2021 (2019)

First line: Cash pulled herself up and out of her bedroom window.

Girl Gone Missing, the second crime novel featuring Renee ‘Cash’ Blackbear, is set on the Minnesota-North Dakota border in the early 1970s. Cash is just 19, toughened and traumatized by a childhood in foster care after being taken from her Ojibwe family at the age of three. Now navigating the alien but intellectually unchallenging world of college, she continues to drive harvest trucks for farmers and play pool for money, a solitary and safe existence that’s unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of a long-lost brother. Then, when her writing talents take her to the city for the first time, strange recurring dreams and the odd disappearance of a college girl converge in a way that threaten her directly.

I have a great deal of time for the ‘Cash Blackbear’ series, not least due to the sympathetic yet unsentimental depiction of its lead character. The author tempers an unflinching look at the realities of 1970s Native American experiences — particularly in relation to the trauma of young adults emerging from the foster care system — with the hope of a more positive future. Cash’s resilience, courage and willingness to take decisive action are amply showcased in this novel, and I’m already looking forward to seeing where life takes her in Sinister Graves, the next in the series. If you’re new to the series, then Murder on the Red River is the place to start.

Wishing you all happy summer reading! 

Lawrence Osborne’s On Java Road (Hong Kong) & Mr Bates vs The Post Office (UK)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Why, hello! I hope you’re doing well, wherever you may be, and that you’ve got lots of lovely books on the go, crime or otherwise. Wishing you a happy Spring Bank Holiday if you’re in the UK.

Here are a couple of recent picks after quite a long hiatus. I’m hoping to get into a rhythm of posting more now: the aim is short and sweet, but a bit more often 🙂

Lawrence Osborne, On Java Road (Vintage 2023)

First line: I thought, in those desperate and forgotten days, of that passage in a novel I had read in school, where the narrator insists that he prefers to be known as a reporter rather than as a journalist, the humbler word better denoting what he does, namely transcribing what he sees.

I found myself in Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street the other week — heaven for anyone who loves travel and international fiction — and emerged with On Java Road, which I’d been eyeing up for a while.

Set in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests of 2019-2020, On Java Road is narrated by Adrian Gyle, a struggling ex-pat reporter who has spent twenty years in the territory. Adrian has one social ace: his old university friend Jimmy Tang, a member of one of Hong Kong’s richest families, who gives him access to high society. But things get tricky when Jimmy begins an extramarital affair with Rebecca, a young woman from another wealthy Hong Kong family, and even more problematically, a pro-democracy demonstrator. When Rebecca disappears and Jimmy refuses to return his calls, Adrian feels compelled to investigate.

On Java Road inevitably brings to mind the work of Graham Greene: Adrian could be viewed as a modern version of Greene’s ex-pat narrators, trying to fathom complex events in places that are both home and utterly alien. Adrian has lived in Hong Kong since just after the British handover of the former colony to China (1997), and what he observes reveals the laughable naivety of thinking nothing would change as a result. By 2019, China is tightening its grip via its proposed extradition bill, and money is no protection against the tricky political choices that now need to be made. An important dissection of a troubled Hong Kong, On Java Road is an elegantly written and highly evocative novel.

This week, I’ve been watching the livestream of the Post Office Horizon Inquiry. Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells was (finally) questioned over the course of three days, and it has been absolutely fascinating to see top KC (King’s Counsel) Jason Beer holding her to account.

In case you’re not familiar with the Post Office scandal, it’s one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the UK. Over 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for crimes such as theft and false accounting over 15 years, when in fact the Post Office’s own Horizon computer system, designed by Fujitsu, was responsible for the shortfalls at individual post offices. Instead of admitting that the Horizon system was flawed, Fujitsu and the Post Office repeatedly denied, misled and withheld information. The Post Office continued to prosecute sub-postmasters aggressively when it was known internally that the evidence given by witnesses in court was ‘unsafe’, and Post Office investigators were offered bonuses for successful prosecutions, which incentivised them to push cases to court. It was a Kafkaesque nightmare for the blameless sub-postmasters involved, which led to years of financial, emotional and reputational damage, and at least four suicides. It is estimated that providing compensation will cost the British taxpayer over a billion pounds.

Back to Paula Vennells and Jason Beer KC. Vennells is a fascinating example of a CEO who prides herself on acting ethically in the corporate world — she’s an ordained priest, no less — but missed a staggering number of chances to address the Horizon scandal. Beer’s job was to illustrate this through a combination of skilful questioning and carefully selected documentary evidence. The most powerful moments came when he confronted her idealised vision of herself with the reality of her past actions. For example, when Vennells claimed she would never have backed off from reviewing past cases to avoid bad publicity, Beer calmly produced an email from 2013 showing that this was exactly what she had done. It seems that being an expert in the workings of human psychology is an invaluable asset for barristers as they build their narrative and case.

The 2024 ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by James Strong, is the acclaimed four-part dramatization of the Horizon scandal, and shows the incredible power of storytelling to illuminate major injustices and kickstart political action (fast-tracked exoneration and compensation processes). While the drama is an amazing tale of grit and collective action on the part of Alan Bates and the other victims, it’s heart-breaking to think how much they could have been spared if the Post Office had admitted its failings sooner. A corporate crime indeed.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office is still available to view on ITV and ITVX.

All I want for Christmas is you! Mrs. Peabody’s 2023 top crime picks

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Here’s Mrs. Peabody’s 2023 Christmas crime list — featuring some of my top reads of the last twelve months (though not necessarily from this year). The books are set in America, Argentina, Australia, Finnish Lapland, Ireland, Japan, Lebanon, Russia and the UK. 

Treat others! Treat yourself! Support local booksellers!

María Angélica Bosco, Death Going Down, tr. from the Spanish by Lucy Greaves (Pushkin Vertigo 2017; first published 1954)

Setting: 1950s Buenos Aires, Argentina

First line: The car pulled up in front of an apartment building on one of the first blocks of Calle Santa Fe, where the street opens out to a view across the wide Plaza San Martín.

María Angélica Bosco (1917-2006) is often styled as the Argentinian Agatha Christie, and this tightly plotted crime novel amply illustrates why. When glamorous Frida Eidinger is found dead in the lift of a luxury Buenos Aires apartment block, its residents — all of whom are hiding secrets beneath their respectable bourgeois exteriors — find themselves the main suspects in the case. While the police inspectors are no match for Christie’s Poirot, their investigation reveals the fascinating diversity of post-1945 Argentinian society. Those questioned include Germans and Bulgarians, many of whom are fleeing the complexities of a war-ravaged Old Europe. Or so they think. And as the novel’s first line shows, Bosco also paints an evocative picture of a unique South American city. A classic crime novel with a difference, deftly translated by Lucy Greaves. 

Jane Harper, Exiles (Pan Macmillan 2023)

Setting: present-day South Australia, wine country

First line: Think back. The signs were there. What were they?

How I love Jane Harper’s absorbing, intelligent crime fiction, which so elegantly plumbs the emotional depths of families and small communities. Exiles opens a year after the strange disappearance of Kim Gillespie, who was spotted multiple times at the Marralee Valley Food and Wine Festival before seemingly vanishing into thin air, leaving her baby tucked up in a pram for the festival organisers to find at the end of the night. Except no one can quite believe that Kim would have done this, and some of her family — especially her teenage daughter Zara — are convinced that something terrible has happened to her. What unfolds is a complex, multi-layered story that’s wholly convincing, with a cast of wonderfully realised characters. Exiles is the third in the ‘Aaron Falk’ trilogy, but can absolutely be read as a standalone (nothing from the previous books is given away). A top-notch read.

Jesse Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (HarperCollins 2023)

Setting: Chinatown, San Francisco, USA

First lines: Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster. We are, of course, referring to Chinese horoscopes. 

I’ve become fond of cosy crime novels over the last few years — a welcome antidote to the world’s rougher edges — but only if they have a bit of depth. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Sutanto, is a great example of how a cosy can leave you feeling warm and uplifted while also engaging with serious issues, such as the damaging social loneliness that older people often experience. At first glance, Vera Wong is a ‘typical’ overbearing first-generation mother: opinionated, meddling and chronically attached to the ‘old ways’. Her traditional Chinese teahouse, which she built up and ran with her late husband, is now shabby and largely deserted, and she’s on the brink of a serious depression. Until, that is, she finds a body sprawled on the floor of her teahouse, and decides to investigate the murder in her own unique way… I listened to the audiobook, which was fabulously narrated by Eunice Wong and made me laugh out loud. Lovers of Chinese cuisine will delight in the mouth-watering descriptions of various Chinese teas and dishes. A skilfully written cosy with heart.

Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends (Bloomsbury 2015)

Setting: 20th-century England, Russia, Lebanon

First line: Two middle-aged spies are sitting in an apartment in the Christian Quarter, sipping tea and lying courteously to one another, as evening approaches.

Back in January, I watched the ITV adaptation of A Spy Among Friends, featuring two excellent performances by Guy Pearce and Damian Lewis. That made me seek out Ben Macintyre’s jaw-dropping book, which tells the true story of Kim Philby, possibly the most notorious of all double agents, who spent decades spying for Russia while working at the very heart of the British intelligence. Betraying one’s country should be the worst of the crimes the book explores, but  Philby’s extraordinary exploitation and betrayal of deep friendships comes a close second. A brilliantly researched piece of espionage history, this is non-fiction that reads like an incredibly exciting thriller. If you’re a John le Carré fan, this real-life Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is most definitely for you.

Pair it with Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor (Penguin 2019), which tells the equally gripping story of Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet double-agent who arguably helped to bring about the end of the Cold War, and Rosamund Pike’s podcast Mother, Neighbour, Russian Spy, which examines the more recent, astonishing case of ‘Cindy Murphy’, aka Lydia Guryev, a Russian spy who lived in deep cover in the United States for a number of years — a fact kept from her two American-born children.

Louise Erdrich, The Round House (Corsair 2013 [2012])

Setting: 1980s North Dakota, USA

First line: Small trees had attacked my parents’ house at the foundation.

2023 was the year I discovered Louise Erdrich, and my Christmas list would be incomplete without her novel The Round House — a stunning dissection of a crime and its consequences. At the heart of the story are the Coutts family, who live on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. When Joe’s mother Geraldine is raped and falls into a deep depression that threatens to destroy her, Joe and his father Bazil, a tribal judge, seek justice for her in different ways. This individual case also allows past crimes committed by the state against the Ojibwe, and especially Ojibwe women, to be illuminated. It’s an intricate, expertly told tale, and there’s a warmth and complexity to the main characters that’s hugely compelling. See my full review here.

Jess Kidd, Himself (Canongate, 2020)

Setting: rural 1970s Ireland

First line: Mahony shoulders his rucksack, steps off the bus and stands in the dead centre of the village of Mulderrig.

I recently re-read Jess Kidd’s Himself (for perhaps the third or fourth time), and fell in love with it all over again. As it’s not featured on one of my Christmas lists before, I’m going to sneak in this finely crafted gem here… It’s Ireland, 1976: Mahony, a charming young man brought up by nuns in a Dublin orphanage, returns to Mulderrig, a tiny village he recently found out was his birthplace. He’s the son of Orla Sweeney, who scandalised the village with her behaviour and supposedly disappeared in 1950. With the help of the eccentric Mrs. Cauley and a host of benign spirits who waft through walls, he starts uncovering the hypocrisies, secrets and malign power dynamics of the village. Utterly original, beautifully written and often wickedly funny, this is a crime novel to savour.

Petra Rautiainen, Land of Snow and Ashes, tr. from the Finnish by David Hackston (Pushkin Press 2022)

Setting: 1940s and 1950s Finnish Lapland

First line: I arrived in Inari yesterday, transferred from the penal colony at Hyljelahti. This new camp isn’t marked on Finnish maps.

Petra Rautiainen’s Land of Snow and Ashes is a historical crime novel that explores a lesser-known aspect of the Second World War: Finland’s brief alliance with Nazi Germany following its occupation of Finland, which included the establishment of a network of camps in Western Lapland. The novel initially unfolds along two timelines — 1944 and 1947 — which seem to lie very close together but are actually worlds apart. In 1944 the Nazi occupation and camps are still in place, while 1947 falls after the Nazi retreat that razed everything it could to the ground, including entire towns like Rovaniemi. We see events through the eyes of two very different narrators: young Finnish soldier Väinö Remes, an interpreter at the Inari camp, and photo-journalist Inkeri Lindquist, who is searching for her missing husband Kaarlo. Thoughtful consideration is also given to the impact on traditional Sámi ways of life by the war and Finnish attempts to ‘educate’ Sámi children in boarding schools in the post-war era. A hard-hitting but rewarding read, skilfully translated by David Hackston, and shortlisted for the Petrona Award.

Seichō Matsumoto, Point Zero, tr. from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai (Bitter Lemon Press 2024, [1958])

Setting: 1950s Tokyo and Kanazawa, Japan

If you’re given a book token for Christmas, then allow me to recommend Point Zero, out in February 2024 from Bitter Lemon Press — it’s just the thing to get your international crime reading off to a cracking start in the new year. I’ve long been a fan of Matsumoto’s work, but am particularly taken with this novel as it features a female investigative lead, which was surely ground-breaking for the time. Set in 1958, Point Zero tells the story of a young woman, Teiko Uhara, whose husband Kenichi vanishes shortly after their honeymoon. Deeply unsettled by his disappearance, Teiko visits the remote coastal city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to piece together what happened. As well as being an absorbing mystery, Point Zero is an accomplished social crime novel. Set less than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, it skilfully depicts the tensions between traditional and modern Japan in the aftermath of the country’s military defeat, especially for a certain generation of Japanese women. Beautifully translated by Louise Heal Kawai, Point Zero is a reminder of the important role translations can play in illuminating other cultures and eras.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!