Nazis, killer dogs and weird sex: Empty Wigs, by Jonathan Meades, reviewed
Meades’s 1,000-page doorstopper is also vast in scope, containing 19 overlapping stories of a family scattered through time and space, and their role in a variety of nefarious goings-on
Thereby hangs a tale
The case of the retired major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a Hay-on-Wye solicitor hanged in 1922 for killing his wife Katharine…
All about Eve
On a winter’s night an artist of moderately exalted reputation and in lateish middle age journeys across London, away from…
The thrill of living dangerously inspires the latest first novels
Here come three novels marketed as debuts but written by authors with some sort of previous, be it in short…
A choice of first novels
At the beginning of this year I underwent a complete literary detox: an absolute, cold-turkey abstention from cutting-edge fiction of…
Nasty piece of work
Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled…
A choice of first novels
I’m not sure I know what the mark of merit is in a first novel, any more than in a…
