Still Midnight
by Denise Mina
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The crime novels of Scottish writer Denise Mina always have “cooler characters, more pitch-perfect dialogue,” and sharper insights about women’s place in society than most novels with loftier literary ambitions, said Jeff Giles in Entertainment Weekly. Field of Blood is still Mina’s best, but this new one introduces a “great, gloomy new” detective heroine and brings to life a working-class Muslim family whose Glasgow home is mistakenly targeted by two slow-witted kidnappers.
The Devil’s Star
by Jo Nesbø
(Harper, $26)
Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series “ranks with today’s best American crime fiction,” said Patrick Anderson in The Washington Post. The third Hole novel to make it to these shores resorts to some hoary plot conventions as Nesbø’s alcoholic Oslo detective hunts a theatrical serial killer. But you read the so-called bad boy of Scandinavian crime fiction for the quality of his writing, for the “wealth of detail,” and, mostly, for his wonderful sense of character. The Devil’s Star is “wildly readable.”
Elegy for April
by Benjamin Black
(Holt, $25)
A young female doctor goes missing in 1950s Dublin, and only her friend Phoebe and Phoebe’s pathologist dad seem to care, said Jonathan Messinger in Time Out Chicago. Though Irish novelist John Banville is working under his crime-genre pen name in this “slow-burning” mystery, the story’s concerns are “Banville through and through.” What he really cares about are how families endure crisis and how individuals respond to the pressures created by midcentury Ireland’s religious hang-ups.
The Dogs of Rome
by Conor Fitzgerald
(Bloomsbury, $25)
“Imagine a young, cute Columbo” running around Rome and you’ll be able to picture police inspector Alec Blume, said Tina Jordan in Entertainment Weekly. Like his creator, Blume is a British expat living in the Eternal City. “When an animal-rights activist—and husband of a prominent Italian politician—is murdered,” the case falls to Blume, and readers are plunged into a mystery “that deftly weaves together corrupt politicians, organized crime, and centuries-old tradition.” A striking debut.
-
Music reviews: Chance the Rapper, Cass McCombs, and Molly TuttleFeature "Star Line," "Interior Live Oak," and "So Long Little Miss Sunshine"
-
Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!Feature Seekers of a new utopia spiral into savagery and a queer private eye prowls a high-desert town
-
Critics' choice: Three chefs fulfilling their ambitionsFeature Kwame Onwuachi's grand second act, Travis Lett makes a comeback, and Jeff Watson's new Korean restaurant
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”