Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
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
crime
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
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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