MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Crime fiction
Reviews of The Perfect Guests by Emma Rousa, Confess to Me by Sharon Doering, Leave the Lights On by Egan Hughes and Highland Fling by Sara Sheridan
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
THE PERFECT GUESTS by Emma Rous (Piatkus, £7.99) is a house-party mystery with gothic elements in which a group of guests are invited to a Fenland mansion, deserted for years, to take part in a test event for a murder-mystery weekend.
Some of them are actors, supposedly in on the whodunnit. But the dangers turn out to be more real than anyone could have imagined, as the reader learns the recent history of Raven Hall, which has witnessed more than its share of tragedies, secret jealousies and obsessions.
Lots of spine-chilling fun, this novel would be the perfect distraction for the evening of a difficult day.
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