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Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
Banged up with anti-festive fun, revenge and trauma
Mat Coward’s crime fiction round-up
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
JAMES WALSH is moved by a provocative and original take on the relationship between ecology and architecture, and a plea to work with, not against, the materials and minerals of our world
An immersive, participatory display by a queer Australian Aboriginal performer, and a rebellious unravelling of traditional Scottish dance
Cardiff psychotherapist Jess Mayhew takes on a worrying new client in Charlotte Williams’s Black Valley (Macmillan, £14.99), a young artist suffering from disabling claustrophobia following the death of her mother who was apparently killed when she surprised a burglar at her daughter’s studio.
Jess becomes convinced that there’s more to the unsolved case, both clinically and criminally. Somehow it’s all linked to the emergence of a reclusive new artist, an ex-miner whose work attacks capitalism’s ruination of the valley communities.
Atmospheric and full of insight, this is a psychological mystery in which, for once, non-sensationalised psychology really is the key.
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MATTHEW HAWKINS welcomes an engaging and nourishing account of the queer subculture that flourished in London between WWII and partial decriminalisation
Monster profits on the Tube, paternal dilemmas for time travellers, and an alien abduction buddy saga
Conman conned in a twisty thriller, blind trust tested to the limit, cunning murder methods, and tip-top police procedural
MAT COWARD writes on Ghost Runner John Tarrant