Other Women by Emma Flint (Picador, £16.99)
It’s been six years since Flint’s debut novel, the compelling Little Deaths, but Other Women is certainly worth the wait. Like its predecessor, this beautifully written, pitch-perfect historical mystery is based on a real case – here, a murder that took place in 1924. Bea Cade, like many other “surplus women” after the first world war, rents a room in a London ladies’ club and counts herself lucky that, at a time when so many former soldiers are still unable to find work, her employer prefers female typists. The small measure of independence allowed her by society is destroyed when she falls in love: charming salesman Tom Ryan is married, and the first time we meet his wife, Kate – whose point of view alternates with Bea’s – we learn that something has gone horribly wrong and a trial is imminent. The characters rise from the page in a moving study of loneliness, desperation, shame and public prurience.
