A.N. Wilson is haunted by summer crime
It is difficult to imagine a better thriller than Michael Robotham’s Lying Beside You (Sphere, £18.99; Tablet price £17.09): a perfect ragout of plot complexity. What seems like a serial sex murder turns out to be a crazy revenge story. There’s a bent copper, and a police psychologist, Cyrus, whose parents were murdered by his schizophrenic brother when he was a teenager, and who has to offer house room to the same brother when, 20 years after the nightmare, he is released from Rampton High Security Prison. And, most compelling and touching of all, there’s Evie, his 21-year-old protégée and a truly wonderful creation. She too has unspeakable demons in her past, and Robotham cleverly does not quite reveal what they are. She started life as an Albanian, but now she is a stroppy Nottingham girl with a police record, a sharp tongue and an uncanny gift for knowing when people are telling lies. Despite lack of education, she has an almost Chandleresque way with words, as when she muses on the fact that all police cells smell the same: “a mixture of boiled cabbage, sweat and bleach, and some mystery ingredient that might be tears or sorrow”. You’ll want to buy half a dozen copies of this as presents. It also – like so many other crime novels these days – comes with a long list of acknowledgements.
