A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis

THE HEATHENS by Ace Atkins (Corsair, £9.99) is the latest in the series about Sheriff Quinn Colson, whose bailiwick is a rural county in Mississippi. When a local white women is murdered, opinion in town is that her rumbustious teenage daughter did it, possibly in cahoots with her boyfriend, who is not only a petty villain, but black as well.
The young couple go on the lam in a series of stolen cars, leaving the sheriff, who’s pretty sure they’re not guilty, to catch them before they manage to get themselves killed.
Brutal, shocking, suspenseful and funny, there’s always a whiff of the freak show about these books, with almost every character being a grotesque or an eccentric, living in a land that seems to be 200 years behind the rest of the world.

Edinburgh can take great pride in an episode of its history where a murderous captain of the city guard was brought to justice by a righteous crowd — and nobody snitched to Westminster in the aftermath, writes MAT COWARD






