The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes (Bantam, £22)
It has been a decade since screenwriter Hayes’s first novel, the critically acclaimed bestseller I Am Pilgrim: now, after many delays, comes his second. The Year of the Locust starts promisingly, as CIA agent Ridley Kane is tasked with entering Iran by stealth in order to obtain a heads-up about a spectacular act of global terrorism. With vivid descriptions, some terrific action sequences and lashings of suspense, the book ticks all the boxes necessary for a superior geopolitical thriller – and, although it seems vanishingly unlikely that any halfway-decent CIA agent would fail to recognise an obvious reference to the world’s worst industrial accident, leaving readers hanging for more than 100 pages until the characters figure out the likely nature of the attack, there is plenty to entertain and distract you while you drum your fingers. But around three-quarters of the way through and with no prior warning, the plot takes a sideways leap and lands in an entirely different genre, which may leave you not so much intrigued as utterly bewildered.
The First 48 Hours by Simon Kernick (Headline, £20)
For something that, in the best possible way, does exactly what it says on the tin, Simon Kernick is hard to beat. This expertly crafted, hits-the-ground-running thriller features four narrators: creepy Delvina, embalmer, dominatrix and head of a team of highly successful kidnappers known as the Vanishers; mordantly cynical police officer Keith “Fish” Fisher, of the National Crime Agency’s Anti Kidnap Unit, who is the Vanishers’ man on the inside; lawyer Becca, who is representing professional hitman Logan Quinn; and her daughter Elle, who is the Vanishers’ next target. They pass the narrative baton between them as the stakes get ever higher in a vivid, high-octane page-turner.
The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou (Head of Zeus, £14.99)
Inspired by the true story of Styllou Christofi, who, in 1954, was convicted of killing her daughter-in-law and became the penultimate woman to be executed in Britain, Kyriacou’s novel explores how things can get lost in translation – not only between languages and cultures, but also between the sexes and the generations. She does a good job of capturing the interior life of Christofi’s lightly fictionalised counterpart, Zina, an illiterate Cypriot peasant made harsh by poverty, cruelty and lack of agency, who, having travelled to London to live with her son and his family, has clashed with his wife from the start. Interpreter Eva soon begins to feel a kinship with her recalcitrant client, and her loyalties are divided when Zina reveals that it isn’t the first time she has been accused of murder. Despite some over-reliance on coincidence, and licence with the legal process – Eva has a great deal more access to Zina than would have been permitted – this is both a complex and fascinating portrait of the immigrant experience in postwar Britain, and a tragic and compelling tale.
The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok (Viper, £14.99)
Kwok’s latest is also a story of a powerless woman in a foreign country, this time with a contemporary setting. When Jasmine discovers that the daughter she thought was stillborn has been sold by her husband to an American couple – China’s one-child policy was still in force at the time, and the preference was for boys – she travels to Manhattan to find the young girl. Jasmine’s plight, as an illegal immigrant with an angry husband on her trail, forced to work in a lapdancing club to pay off the gangsters who have facilitated her journey, is contrasted with the life of the child’s adoptive mother, a wealthy white woman with a high-powered career. However, Rebecca has her own problems, and soon finds that not only are her job and marriage in meltdown, but there is something not quite right about the awkward, frumpy nanny hired by her husband. Although melodramatic and fairly unsubtle, this is nevertheless a propulsive and engrossing narrative.
Gaslight by Femi Kayode (Raven, £16.99)
The second novel in Kayode’s Nigeria-set series featuring investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is centred on a Lagos-based megachurch. Asked to investigate the disappearance of the wife of Bishop Jeremiah Dawodu, Taiwo discovers that “First Lady”, as she is known, was not popular with the church elders, who view her as a troublemaker. But all is not as it seems: signs of a bloody struggle inside the couple’s home appear to have been staged, and the initially anonymous italicised sections of text make it clear that someone has it in for the religious leader, who may not be the upstanding man of God that he seems … Deftly plotted, with strong characterisation and a great sense of place, Gaslight more than lives up to the promise of its excellent predecessor.
