A character in Sophie Hannah’s A Game for All the Family (Hodder, £14.99, pp. 432) presents a theory: ‘Mysteries are the best kind of stories because you only get the truth at the very end, when you’re absolutely desperate.’ This makes us realise just how scarce truth is. In books, as in life.
It’s an idea to keep in mind as we follow former television producer Justine on her quest to start a new, quieter life in Devon. This dream proves elusive, as her teenage daughter makes a new friend at school, a friend who the teachers insist doesn’t actually exist. Is the friend real, or just a product of a girl’s imagination? Chapters telling of Justine’s daily battle against threatening phone calls and psychotic neighbours alternate with her daughter’s whodunit story, written as a school English project.
As the two strands intermingle, the novel takes on the mood of a fevered middle-class fantasy gone wrong. Hannah’s previous book was an authorised Hercule Poirot novel. And Christie is definitely the model here, albeit twisted into new bizarre shapes. At the end doubts linger: is there yet another story hidden within the one we’ve just finished reading?
Some truths can hardly be thought about, never mind admitted. Cornflower Blue (Haus, £12.99, pp. 242) by the writing team of Christian Schünemann and Jelena Volic is set in Serbia and concerns itself with the long, difficult aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. Two guards from a unit of elite soldiers are found dead. A military court declares them victims of a ritual suicide pact and the investigation is closed.
However, inconsistencies in the report draw researcher Milena Lukin into the case. The guardsmen were murdered on the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide; are their deaths connected to those terrible events in some way? Lukin comes up against the might of the military establishment, who have no interest in owning up to past evil, nor in punishing those
who are truly responsible.
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