{"id":4099,"date":"2013-04-16T10:30:50","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T10:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4099"},"modified":"2013-04-17T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T10:35:09","slug":"april-crime-column-by-daphne-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4099","title":{"rendered":"April Crime Column by Daphne Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Ides of April<\/em> by Lindsey Davis published by Hodder & Stoughton<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Dying Hours<\/em> by Mark Billingham published by Little Brown<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cuckoo\u2019s Calling<\/em> by Robert Galbraith published by Sphere<\/strong><\/p>\n

The View on the Way<\/em> Down by Rebecca Wait published by Picador<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Killing in the Hills<\/em> by Julia Keller published by Headline<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lindsey Davis’s many fans will have been made anxious by the news that she is embarking on a new series with a new sleuth.\u00a0 They need not worry.\u00a0 Marcus Didius Falco’s adopted daughter, Flavia Albia, is a wonderful creation, rendered with a surprising tenderness.\u00a0 Rescued as a child from danger and destitution in the barbarian country of Britain, Flavia Albia is now grown up and investigating a series of perplexing deaths in Rome, secretly rescuing wild foxes from a horrible fate, and fighting the hardest of all women’s battles:\u00a0 how to remain independent and yet commit yourself to love.\u00a0 Just as closely researched and yet light-hearted as the Falco novels, The Ides of April<\/em> is more touching.<\/p>\n

Mark Billingham is another writer with legions of fans, who will not be disappointed with his latest novel, The Dying Hours<\/em>.\u00a0 Tom Thorne has been demoted and is back working in uniform, angry and unhappily bad at relationships but still skilled in detection.\u00a0 Again, we are offered a series of puzzling deaths, this time all looking like suicide.\u00a0 Billingham provides more gruesome details than Davis, and fewer laughs, but his affection for the emotionally incompetent Thorne is warming.<\/p>\n

There is also plenty of affection in The Cuckoo’s Calling<\/em>, a first novel by an ex-special-forces soldier, writing under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith.\u00a0 His hero, Cormoran Strike, shares his military background and is struggling with a prosthetic lower leg, a private-investigation business on its uppers, and a disastrous, just-ended relationship with a rich beautiful woman.\u00a0 The only lucky aspects of his life are a potential new client with lots of money and a murdered sister and his own new temp, Robin Ellacott.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robin is everyone’s idea of the perfect assistant:\u00a0 seeing everything and commenting on nothing;\u00a0 economical; efficient; honest; generous; and funny.\u00a0 Cormoran Strike is great too, described early in the novel as ‘massive; his height, his general hairiness, coupled with a gently expanding belly, suggested a grizzly bear.\u00a0 One of his eyes was puffy and bruised, the skin just below the eyebrow cut…’<\/p>\n

The plot could have come from an Agatha Christie novel and yet The Cuckoo’s Calling<\/em> is absolutely of today, colourfully written and great fun.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The View on the Way Down<\/em> offers no fun at all, or investigation, but it deals with the aftermath of a crime on an ordinary family in a way that is heartbreakingly bleak.\u00a0 Dad finds solace turning wood in his shed.\u00a0 Mum cleans and bakes manically.\u00a0 Pre-teen Emma is fat and bullied at school, and looking for consolation from religion.\u00a0 All three are locked in their own solitude as they try to make sense of the loss of Emma’s two elder brothers, who were once inseparably devoted.\u00a0 This first novel by Rebecca Wait is a beautifully written exploration of loss and blame.<\/p>\n

Julia Keller’s A Killing in the Hills<\/em> came out in hardback last summer, but I missed it then.\u00a0 Now published in paperback, it reveals the difficulties of life in a small town inWest Virginia.\u00a0 Bell Elkins escaped a dreadful childhood there, went to law school and was set for a bright future far away from the privations she had once known, but conscience drove her back.\u00a0 Now divorced with a rebellious teenage daughter, she is a prosecuting attorney, fighting the casual but destructive drug culture she sees all around.\u00a0 Her war puts her and her daughter at risk, as well as opening all kinds of old wounds and ramming home to her (and to us) the awful depths of rural poverty inAmerica.\u00a0 There are hints of an apple-pie kind of ending but Keller manages to write movingly, while at the same time avoids all sentimentality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Daphne Wright<\/p>\n

Dad finds solace turning wood in his shed. Mum cleans and bakes manically. Pre-teen Emma is fat and bullied at school, and looking for consolation from religion. All three are locked in their own solitude as they try to make sense of the loss of Emma’s two elder brothers, who were once inseparably devoted. This first novel by Rebecca Wait is a beautifully written exploration of loss and blame […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4099"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4126,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions\/4126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}