The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: September 24, 2024
Country house locked rooms, actuarial anomalies, murdered scientists and black-out disorientation
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JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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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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