While Holmes is away
Careful Sherlockians, on returning in adulthood to the four novels and 56 short stories that they devoured uncritically in their…
The gambler’s daily grind
Lord Doyle is a shrivelled English gambler frittering away his money and destroying his liver in the casinos of Macau.…
Madness and massacre in the jungle
In his new novel, Children of Paradise, Fred D’Aguiar, a British-Guyanese writer, returns to the Jonestown massacre, previously the subject…
A creepy father, a lustful music teacher, four virgins — and one genuine love affair
London, 1794. It’s a different world from that portrayed by the Mrs Radcliffes and Anons of the time: rich young…
Village life can be gripping
Black Sheep opens biblically, with a mining village named Mount of Zeal, which is ‘built in a bowl like an…
