Georges Simenon’s Night at the Crossroads (1931, 2024) has been reprinted in the Penguin Modern Classics series already referred to in these reviews. The edition is pleasant to handle and fitted easily into my jacket pocket. This is a genuine puzzle, a who-done-it involving a corpse in a car in the wrong garage, and only three buildings at the site, a road junction of which all the inhabitants are suspicious. There is plenty of shooting, indeed a surprising amount for the average Maigret, but also an excellent plot with sufficient twists to satisfy all. Strongly recommended.

Australia is a montage of tricky individuals, violence, flight and pursuit in this well-written novel

So also from Australia, is Dinuka McKenzie’s Tipping Point (Canelo, 2024, £9.99), an Australian backcountry puzzler with an impressive central character, Detective Kate Miles, and her difficult druggie brother, Luke, whose two childhood friends both die, apparently by suicide and accident. A ‘what is going on?’ becomes a ‘who done it?’ with its roots in adolescent behaviour. Impressive both as a novel and as a puzzle.

Sanctuary (Viper, 2024, £9.99) by the accomplished Australian writer Garry Disher centres on Grace, a skilful young thief perpetually on the move in an attempt to avoid unwanted acquaintances. She moves in with Erin, an antique shop owner who turns out to have her own pursuing demon. Australia is a montage of tricky individuals, violence, flight and pursuit in this well-written novel, at times improbable but always interesting.

Best known for his impressive ‘Railway Detective’ series, A.J. (Andrew) Martin is a more wideranging author. His The Night in Venice (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £22) is a ‘did she? will she?’ psychological puzzle, from the perspective of Monica, an imaginative young woman waking in Venice in 1911 to wonder whether she killed her disliked governess Rose Driscoll. A clever novel about London society and the experience of Venice, one that will not work for those readers who might like a little more action.

Peter Swanson’s A Talent for Murder (Faber, 2024, £18.99) sees this experienced American novelist take a relationship in difficulties to see if a woman’s suspicion that her husband is a murderer as well as a travelling salesman can be used to produce a novel with multiple uncertainties over motive. ‘Me-Too’ brings in a female revenge murderer, Martha’s friend, Lily, as well as a range of male deceit. Works very well indeed.

Also from America, Attica Locke’s Guide Me Home (Viper, 2024) is a strongly written account of the disappearance of a young student at Stephen F. Austin University, one I read with particular interest having lectured there. The protagonist, Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger who has just resigned, is being chased in a politically motivated campaign, but is pressured by his difficult mother into trying to find out what happened to Sera Fuller. A dystopia of racism, business manipulation and prejudice soon come to the fore in a novel that has much on personal relations, notably between Darren and his mother, former wife, and current partner. Well-written and interesting, this is a good book, more novel than detective story, but none the worse for that.

Pushkin has already had considerable success with its translations of Seishi Yokomizo’s detective novels. Set in 1955, The Little Sparrow Murders (2024, £9.99) was published in Japanese in 1971 and reflected interest not only in a plot that puts his established private detective, the scruffy, far from ‘cool’ Kosuke Kindaichi, into a complex series of murders linked to a children’s song, but also one that reflected Japanese interest in a world that was passing. This was both because of the setting in a remote valley and due to the extent to which events in the 1930s, notably an unsolved murder, provide the explanatory background: ‘Your hypothesis still seems too far-fetched to me, almost like something from a detective novel. However that is my common sense speaking, and lately I’ve realized that if we put that to one side and operate solely on the basis of logic…’. Works very well. I did not anticipate the solution. Readers may need the helpful List of Characters.

Stories floating on chat and prosecco are always somewhat problematic. Sophie Flynn’s What Stays Unsaid (Hera, 2024, £9.99) did not work for me. Not the first Hen Party thriller with psychological tensions and a dark secret, but it was not that so much as a writing and characterisation that did not grip me: too much writing of the ‘We need to stick together. If the truth ever comes out, it’s going to destroy both of us – and Millie … “She’s dead.” Alex gulps, the word so final and dramatic she hasn’t got her head around it yet.’ Indeed, confession time and not a dark secret. I really regretted plunging on, but a reviewer’s duty…

A dark secret from the past is of course a familiar theme, one that allows for two murder mysteries in one as ell as established moral tropes. Indeed, the latter contribute to the role of the detective story as modern morality tales. A dark secret also plays a role in Sheila Bugler’s Dark Road Home (Canelo, 2024, £9.99). Ignore the cover comment ‘Deadly Secrets Live in Dying Towns,’ as Bugler sets her story in a town that is far from dying. The role of the past is crucial in a story that exemplifies the author’s point ‘that actions always have consequences.’ The writing is charmless, and maybe Bugler is a AI bot:

‘“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “It’s hard sometimes to know what to think, or who to believe. There have been so many lies over the years, so many secrets, I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in them.”
“Listen to me,” Isabelle says. “What happened that night was a terrible tragedy that has affected us both deeply. Afterwards, we did what we thought was best. There was nothing else we could have done.”’

To Times’ it or not? Like all others, this novel raises the question of how much of the plot should be revealed. The Times’ monthly reviewers repeatedly give the plot away. I am loath to do so, possibly excessively so, but the pleasure for the reader should include the mystery, and notably so if the writing is indifferent.

We are not in Hamletland here, and in the case of Dark Road Home you only need to turn to the back cover to find out much of the first 200 pages; much but not all. And there is still another 140 pages to go, even if the murderer was somewhat inevitable, while the cause is somewhat predictable for stories set in Ireland. Now is that giving too much away? Incidentally, no point doing as the lazy reviewers and reprinting or summarising what is on the back (which is also dear reader printed on the PR sheet sent to reviewers in case they cannot read the back cover). Memo from this plot, do be careful who you murder when young as tasks anew will face you in the future. Oh! and stay away from child-abusers, claustrophobic family neuroses, and the … in general.

All should be interested in Jarndyce catalogue 270, A Detective Story, A Catalogue of Detective Fiction (summer 2024), the catalogue written by Jessica Starr with scholarly entries and cover illustrations. An excellent catalogue with much of the content late nineteenth century. I wonder which modern works will deserve listing in future equivalents.

The Game is Afoot is the title of my book on Holmes, and not a book on Olympic-style malfeasance. I was very interested therefore to read Andrew Finkel’s debut The Adventure of the Second Wife. The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and the Ottoman Sultan (Even Keel, 2024, £20). A game of allusions, and a fine piece of writing, this account covers a Holmes enthusiast and a Turkish literature professor who unearth a lost Holmes puzzle. A longstanding Istanbul correspondent, Finkel produces a feast for specialists, and those who admire the corpus from a distance will still find much to enjoy.