MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
Crime fiction with Mat Coward: January 7, 2025
A late Christmas cornucopia, a Canadian wolf, a dodgy motel and Peter Diamond’s last bow
![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
CRIME stories have been a fixture at Christmas for well over a century now, and Death Comes At Christmas (Titan, £19.99), edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, is one of the best anthologies of its type I can remember.
There’s not a single weak entry among the 18 pieces by as many authors, and several real winners, with a good variety of tone and type, from locked rooms reminiscent of the Golden Age to forensic techs wearing bloodstained paper suits.
I won’t try and pick out highlights, for fear of slighting the others, except to say that Alexandra Benedict deserves a Best Punning Title prize for The Midnight Mass Murderer.
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