RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: September 24, 2024
Country house locked rooms, actuarial anomalies, murdered scientists and black-out disorientation
crime
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
CABARET MACABRE by Tom Mead (Head of Zeus, £20) continues the 1930s-set adventures of stage illusionist turned amateur sleuth, Joseph Spector, and Inspector Flint of the Yard. This time they are each approached separately by two sides of a deadly vendetta. The wife of a notorious hanging judge wants Spector to investigate threats on his life, while the sister of a man detained in a lunatic asylum for a previous assault on M'lud tries to convince the inspector that the judge is planning a murder.
Working together, the two friends must solve a series of impossible crimes and locked-room mysteries to get at the truth — which inevitably is to be found in a country house, cut off from the world by a snowstorm.
As long as Mead can keep coming up with ideas for these fun, atmospheric stories, I'll keep reading them.
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