TONY BURKE plots the career of the legendary Senegalese band from Dakar nightclubs to Glastonbury
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: April 18, 2023
Patricide, double identity, surveillance paranoia and an all-female crime ring that has the air of an instant classic
RITA DI SANTO contemplates two films about journalism that opened this year’s festival
GEOFF BOTTOMS applauds a world-class production King Lear that pits late feudalism against a rising bourgeoisie
MARY CONWAY keeps up with the sheer pace of a drama about the terrible gap between sanitised reporting and real-life turmoil of race and gender
New releases from Brian Fallon, Antony Szmierek and Hollow Hand
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes a revival of Reginald Rose’s classic play that reminds us of the fundamental need for trials with juries
THE setting for THE MESSENGER by Megan Davis (Zaffre, £14.99) is contemporary Paris, and its never-quite-declared war between the inner city and the suburbs, the rich and the poor, the white and the not white enough.
It centres on Alex, a young man raised in both France and the US, who’s just been released from a prison sentence for his part in the murder of his journalist father.
He didn’t do it — but the trouble is, he almost did. Driven by guilt at having sold out a friend to get a lighter sentence, and anger at his wasted youth, he is now set on finding out who finished his dad off, after Alex and his friend left him beaten but alive.
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