The Cellar by Minette Walters; Time of Death by Mark Billingham; The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango; The Cunning House by Richard Marggraf Turley; Robin Hood Yard by Mark Sanderson
It has been a while since Minette Walters published any full-length fiction, but admirers won’t be disappointed by The Cellar (Hammer, £12.99), a crime/horror hybrid in which, despite a slightly ambiguous ending, it is clear that the devil is a psychological demon produced by a toxic combination of superstition, abuse and fear. Many of Walters’ books tackle big issues, and this one is about domestic slavery. What has happened to young Muna is horrific: female genital mutilation, followed by importation from Africa as a chattel of the Songoli family, being made to sleep in the eponymous cellar, forbidden to go outside, beaten and sexually abused. Muna is much cleverer, and also far more damaged, than her tormentors suppose, and she has picked up enough English to understand what is going on when the police come to the house to investigate the disappearance of 10-year-old Abiola Songoli. Slowly, ingeniously – and, it has to be said, pretty gruesomely – she uses her knowledge of their weaknesses to turn the tables on the boy’s father, mother and brother. The cover price is a bit cheeky for a novella, but this compact, well-told and extraordinarily atmospheric story packs more punch than many much longer books.
Removing a well-loved fictional policeman from his natural habitat can be a risky business, especially when the copper in question is on leave and has no authority to investigate anything. Time of Death, Mark Billingham’s 13th Tom Thorne thriller (Little, Brown, £18.99), finds the DI once again uprooted from London, this time to the small Warwickshire town of Polesford where his partner, DS Helen Weeks, grew up, and where Stephen Bates, the husband of one of her old friends, has just been arrested for abducting two schoolgirls.More
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