Mystery
A literary Russian doll: The Tower, by Thea Lenarduzzi, reviewed
The closer we get to the mystery of Annie, a 19th-century consumptive locked up in a tower by her wealthy father, the more we are lost in other stories within stories
Honeymoon from hell: Venetian Vespers, by John Banville, reviewed
A fin-de-siècle hack marries the daughter of wealthy oil baron but soon begins to wonder what he’s let himself in for
Whatever happened to Caroline Lane? A Margate mystery
How could a feisty middle-aged woman suddenly vanish from the seaside town without trace? David Whitehouse set out to discover
The mother of a mystery: Audition, by Katie Kitamura, reviewed
A married couple’s life is thrown into turmoil with the arrival of a handsome young man out of the blue claiming to be the woman’s son
Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed
An enigmatic captain tasked with repairing undersea communication cables disappears, and it’s up to his shipmate to discover why
The mystery of the missing man: Green Ink, by Stephen May, reviewed
Things look bad for the former socialist MP Victor Grayson after he threatens to expose David Lloyd George’s cash for honours scandal in 1920
Clouded memories: Ballerina, by Patrick Modiano, reviewed
An ageing narrator looks back 50 years to ‘a most uncertain’ period of his life in Paris and his relationship with a mysterious, elusive ballet dancer
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
Small-town mysteries: A Case of Matricide, by Graeme MacRae Burnet, reviewed
The gifted writer Graeme Macrae Burnet makes a mockery of the genres publishers impose on credulous readers. The author of…
Mysteries and misogyny: The Empusium, by Olga Tokarczuk, reviewed
Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain in this ‘health resort horror story’ set in a Silesian guesthouse on the eve of the first world war
Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed
A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone
Magical mystery tour
At a village train station in deepest Kent two men and their pet mongoose are setting off on their honeymoon.…
Putting the boot into Italy
A young woman, naked and covered in blood, totters numbly down a night road. A driver spots her in his…
City of dreadful dusk
Fantastic fiction loves contrasts made explicit: Eloi and Morlocks, orcs and elves, and above all humans battling vampires, Martians or…
The lives of the artists — and other mysteries
Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was published in 2012, picked up good reviews, was shortlisted for the Costa…
