Recent crime novels | 9 August 2008

Andrew Taylor reviews a selection of recent crime novels 

The Murder Farm (Quercus, £8.99) is Andrea Schenkel’s first novel and has been hugely successful in her native Germany and elsewhere. Based on a real case, it is set in the 1950s and deals with murder of a farmer, his wife, daughter, grandchildren and maid. It is a short book with an unusual structure — an account of the case which seems to be compiled by a narrator from outside the area is intercut with witness statements giving glimpses of events, people and relationships in this isolated rural setting, and also with a handful of impassioned prayers. Gradually the reader, who is in the privileged position of knowing more than any of the characters, assembles information about what really happened and why it had to end with a frenzied murderer wielding a pick-axe. The remote community in which the drama unfolds has a universal quality.