Christmas gift book ideas: crime, historical, literary fiction
Continuing this week with book ideas for Christmas presents, there are some great crime novels, historical novels and literary fiction in the bookshops.
Crime Fiction
Michael Connolly’s The Proving Ground (Orion €16.99) is his new Lincoln Lawyer novel, where lawyer Mickey Haller is involved in a court case that blames AI for encouraging a 16-year-old boy to murder his girlfriend.
Vaseem Khan’s Quantum of Menace (Zaffre €23.20) has Agent Q (head of Q Department in the James Bond stories) ousted from his job and retiring to his childhood home of Wickstone-on-Water. An old friend of his has died in mysterious circumstances and Q decides to investigate.
Ruth Kelly’s The Afterparty (Pan €14.50) has Becca receive a phone call from a long-lost childhood friend on New Year’s Eve. Since her husband isn’t around, Becca invites her friend Georgie to the party. Becca wakes up in hospital the next day, and Georgie is missing. A clever thriller, set in Amsterdam.
Historical Fiction
Myles Dungan’s The Red Branch (Etruscan Press €26.50) tells the story of Metropolitan Police Officer Robert Emmet Orpen, who’s sent from London to San Francisco in 1883, in a bid to stop the flow of American ammunition being sent to Irish revolutionaries in Britain. Poised somewhere between the historical novels of Joe O’Connor and the great Paraic O’Donnell, it’s pacy, tense and funny.
Hayley Gelfuso’s The Book of Lost Hours (Atlantic €15.99) follows young Lisavet from 1938’s Kristallnacht, November 9, a night where almost all Jewish properties in Germany and Austria were destroyed by the Nazi regime, through the postwar era to the 1960s, while nodding at Ancient Rome and other major historical eras. A novel that explores (with the help of a little magic) the nature of memory and who decides what’s preserved and what’s not.
Karen Swan’s The Midnight Secret (Pan €14.50) is set on the Scottish island of St Kilda, in the years before the island’s last residents were finally evacuated in 1930. On the eve of the evacuation, Jayne spends the night at her sister’s grave on the island, in the company of her sister’s fiancé. She foresees a murder and wants to stop it, but to do so would inform her abusive husband of who she spent the night with, putting both of them in danger.
The concluding novel in the St Kilda series. Frank Shouldice’s Beneath the Cedar Tree (Liffey Press €19.95) is set in 1995, when the Gogartys discover the man who killed their son is being released early from prison, for good behaviour. Consumed with a lust for revenge that doesn’t work out, they travel to Medjugorje in war-torn Bosnia, seeking some kind of solace, although neither is religious. There they meet Anja and Damir, a couple whose lives have been destroyed by the Siege of Sarajevo. An examination of private and public grief, it’s a beautifully written novel about the futility of retribution.
Lulu Taylor’s A Legacy of Secrets (Pan €14.99) is a novel about family secrets carried through generations. The Carrington family are well off but beset by bad fortune through the ages. As Flick Templeton researches her own ancestral history, the reader is taken on a journey that stretches from the 1950s to the early 1990s, in search of an ancient family curse and maybe a possible remedy.
Ross Montgomery’s The Murder at World’s End (Penguin Viking €21.75) is set in 1910 off the coast of Cornwall, where the Viscount of Tithe Hall is convinced that the passing of Halley’s Comet signals the apocalypse and so seals up his mansion in the hope it will escape destruction. But he’s found dead in his study, killed by his own crossbow. His new under-butler Steven Pike and the family matriarch, Miss Decima Stockingham, embark on some sleuthing, with surprising results. Described as Downtown Abbey meets Knives Out, it’s clever, entertaining and hilarious.
Literary Fiction
An Alternative Irish Christmas (Tramp Press €25.00) is a feast of an anthology, for which some of our most celebrated Irish writers throw in their tuppence worth. It’s full of stories of quiet reflection, nostalgia, chaos, horror and comedy. Contributors include Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Maggie Armstrong, Tim McGabhann, Belinda McKeon and many more. Handsomely produced, it’s a perfect gift for any bookworm.
Hugo Hamilton’s Conversations with the Sea (Hachette €16.99) sees Lukas Dorn fleeing Berlin after his marriage breakdown and landing on Achill Island, where he and his wife had spent their honeymoon. There he reflects on his own life and his daughter’s, while discovering the life and writings of fellow German, Heinrich Böll, who owned a cottage on the island. An intimate and intense novel that quietly celebrates Böll’s life and work, as well as the island itself.
A work of supreme elegance. Kevin Smith’s Injury Time (Lilliput €16.95) is a dark comedy about Fenton Conville’s midlife crisis. He’s now 50 years old, has had a cancer scare and his tanning salon empire is crumbling – people no longer want to cook themselves under lamps – and his income is rapidly dwindling. Set in Dublin and post-Brexit Belfast, it’s bejewelled with acerbic observations and bawl-out-loud fun.
Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know (Jonathan Cape €17.99) is set in the 22nd century, when more than half of the planet lies underwater, the only surviving parts of Britain are a few high-ground archipelagos, Nigeria owns the internet and the global population has plummeted. Scholar Tom Metcalfe is searching for a poem, never seen, written by a famous poet in 2014. What he finally discovers is shocking. A work of real genius from a man who is, in my ‘umble, a real genius.
Caragh Maxwell’s Sugartown (Oneworld €15.99) has Saoirse return from London, where she’s blown up her life, to her childhood home in smalltown midlands Ireland. And nothing prepares her for the culture shock. Returning to one’s mother for solace is a common enough occurrence, but Saoirse wouldn’t recommend it…
Footnotes
Practically every community hall and arts centre in the country is busy this week, hosting festive and seasonal shows and events, most of which are family oriented. Skipping the Dublin traffic at this most chaotic time of year, to see a family show in your nearest venue, is a much better idea.