MATTHEW HAWKINS witnesses a contemporary ballet that represents human life as subjected to artificial intelligence
The murder of an archaeology professor and one of her young students, with whom she was having a not very secret affair, leads Inspector Christian Tell and his Gothenburg police colleagues on the trail of ancient treasures looted from Iraqi museums during the US-EU invasion.
But in Babylon (Phoenix, £7.99) by Camilla Ceder, there’s also a more obvious suspect — the dead man’s girlfriend, who is undergoing treatment for impulsive behaviour arising out of an obsessive fear of infidelity.
Readers of Swedish crime fiction will be used to the strong focus on the tortured emotional lives of police, victims and suspects alike. But this book, perhaps best described as a psychological police procedural, breaks with the “Scandi-crime” stereotype in one way — although troubled, the characters are not all pathologically miserable.
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
Conman conned in a twisty thriller, blind trust tested to the limit, cunning murder methods, and tip-top police procedural
RON JACOBS is enthralled by Roberto Saviano’s portrait of heroes and deplorables, that calls for people to stand up for themselves and the things they believe in
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy



