Havoc by Christopher Bollen (Borough, £16.99)
The narrator of American author Bollen’s latest novel, 81-year-old Wisconsin widow Maggie Burkhardt, has an insatiable desire to meddle in other people’s lives. Her methods, which include spreading rumours and planting false evidence of adultery, are designed to “change people’s lives for the better, whether they see it that way or not”. Sequestered in European hotels since the death of her husband six years earlier, the start of lockdown finds her a resident of the once-grand Royal Karnak Palace in Luxor, Egypt. It’s clear from the off that her attempts to “liberate” people haven’t always ended well – “I don’t like to talk about the murder” – but Maggie, whose inconsistent account of her past soon has us starting to doubt her reliability, just can’t help herself. When a weedy, bespectacled and sly eight-year-old boy comes to stay at the hotel with his mother, Maggie meets her match. Young Otto realises what she’s up to and starts blackmailing her; carnage ensues as the pair end up locked in a death-spiral. Beautiful writing and expertly torqued tension add up to a delightfully nasty page-turner.
Strange Pictures by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion (Pushkin Vertigo, £14.99)
YouTuber Uketsu, a mysterious masked figure whose identity is unknown, is a bestseller in his native Japan. His debut novel, illustrated with the titular black-and-white drawings, contains both visual and narrative mysteries-within-a-mystery. A psychology professor attempts to deconstruct the artwork of an 11-year-old killer; a student becomes curious about an abandoned blog containing a pregnant woman’s eerily prescient drawings; a threatening stranger stalks a mother whose six-year-old son has crayoned a disturbing picture of their block of flats; the final landscape sketch of a murder victim found on a mountain gives a clue to who killed him – and all these stories are ingeniously linked. The picture puzzles are intriguing, and sharp-eyed readers/viewers may sometimes find themselves figuring things out slightly ahead of the protagonists, but there’s a surprisingly satisfactory emotional resonance to this macabre, unsettling box of tricks.
The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker, £20)
Set in 1944, six months after the Italians changed sides, the second title in O’Connor’s Rome Escape Line trilogy continues the story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his fellow conspirators. Known as The Choir, they operate out of a Vatican left alone by the city’s Nazi occupiers in exchange for papal neutrality, risking their lives to help allied soldiers and other fugitives evade capture. The Choir’s attempts to rescue a grievously wounded Polish airman right under the nose of Gestapo commander Paul Hauptmann, who has been warned of the Fuhrer’s “intense displeasure” at his failure to eradicate the Escape Line, have a nail-bitingly tense “real time” feel to them. BBC interviews from the 1960s with former Choir members and fragments of an unpublished memoir give historical perspective and added pathos to this vivid and moving story, with O’Connor seamlessly combining real characters with imagined ones.
Murder Mindfully by Karsten Dusse, translated by Florian Duijsens (Faber, £9.99)
At the start of German bestseller Dusse’s latest novel, lawyer Björn Diemel gets an ultimatum from his wife: he must improve his work/life balance and spend more time with their toddler, or the marriage is over. Bjorn seeks help from a mindfulness coach and soon finds himself doing breathing exercises and becoming more present. When his chief client, brutal crime boss Dragan Sergowicz, threatens to disrupt his time with his daughter, his priorities are clear: leaving Dragan, who has enlisted his help in escaping the police, to roast to death in the boot of his car, he and young Emily enjoy their weekend together. After this, not only must Bjorn dispose of the body and placate Dragan’s suspicious associates, the onus is on him to find a pre-school for Emily – but practising mindfulness ensures that he is able to work through it all with calm assurance… Personal growth takes a wholly unexpected form in this wonderfully dark and cynical comedy.
The Day of the Roaring by Nina Bhadreshwar (Hemlock, £16.99)
Bhadreshwar’s debut novel is set in and around Sheffield, where DI Diana Walker is investigating the case of a dismembered headteacher, whose head has been found on the site of his now-closed school. Walker’s colleagues think it’s the work of an organised crime group, but she’s not so sure, particularly as another former staff member is missing and the body of a third was discovered, two years after death, in a bedsit run by a charity for victims of domestic violence. There’s a great deal going on here, with a very large cast, multiple points of view, and topics ranging from county lines drug running and corporate corruption to the horrors of FGM and the Mau-Mau rebellion in colonial-era Kenya. While this can make for an airless and somewhat disjointed reading experience, there’s no doubting the authenticity of Bhadreshwar’s portrayal of people who, with no reason to trust authority, choose to take matters into their own hands.