MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: March 11, 2025
A no-nonsense ex-Garda female cop, Scandi-noir’s newest flawed hero, the lure of Aussie gold, and unexpected decency in Silicon valley
crime
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
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
THE DARK HOURS by Amy Jordan (HQ, £16.99) features a retired detective inspector who lives in a remote Irish village and mostly keeps to herself. When she sleeps, which isn’t her forte, there’s always a torch and a golf club close at hand.
Thirty years earlier she was a young Garda in Cork involved on the periphery of the hunt for a multiple murderer, and those events have haunted her ever since. When her old boss rings, needing her help, she learns that the past isn’t over yet.
This is a nice twisty plot, but best of all is the book’s truly unusual main character — a retired cop in her 60s who’s learned a bit over the years, and unlearned bits where necessary, too; she won’t take crap from anyone, but she’s more sympathetic to them now than she was then.
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