THE PALE BLUE EYE
by Louis Bayard
John Murray, £17.99
It is 1831, and Gus Landor knows that he is dying. Landor is a New York cop and, in his last hours, he can’t stop brooding about his most mysterious case. A young cadet at the West Point military academy was found hanged, but it could not have been suicide because the body was horribly mutilated. So begins an immensely satisfying whodunnit, richly imaginative and peopled with real historical characters. In particular, Landor receives valuable help from a poetic young cadet by the name of Edgar Allan Poe — who sees certain things that certain important people want to keep hidden. Good, clean homicidal fun.
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THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS
by Martyn Bedford
Bloomsbury, £10.99)
Finn lives in a bleak, war-torn dictatorship, not a million miles from our own dear country — although time and place are never specified. At the opening of this sharp, funny, pitiless novel, he gets his call-up papers. He is 24 years old, does not support the (unspecified) war and is scared of dying. He sees what the war has done to his brother. But does he have the courage to go on the run? And is it the right thing to do? Bedford digs deeply into the morality of bravery and cowardice, and the true price of folllowing your conscience.
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TABLOID LOVE
by Bridget Harrison
Bantam, £10.99
Here is a delicious treat for a sunny afternoon — so light and low in calories that it won’t spoil your dinner. It is a kind of novelised memoir, breathlessly related by the author as if she were sitting with you in a wine bar. On the point of turning 30, Bridget Harrison decides to leave London and her nice boyfriend, to seek her fortune in the Big Apple. She goes to work for the tabloid New York Post, and begins the girl-reporter life she hasalways dreamt about – Lois Lane in search of Superman. Unfortunately, Clark Kent seems to have left the building. Vivid, pacey andvery funny.