Friday, July 10, 2015

The best recent crime novels – review roundup

Freedom’s Child by Jax Miller; The Beginning of the End by Ian Parkinson; The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum; A Book of Scars by William Shaw; and In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward

Surface tension … the Dub at Wrea Green in Lancashire. In Karin Fossum's The Drowned Boy, a child is
Surface tension … the Dub at Wrea Green in Lancashire. In Karin Fossum’s The Drowned Boy, a child is found dead in a pond. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Freedom's Child by Jax Miller
Seldom has a literary creation bounced off the page with as much raw vitality as Freedom Oliver, the central character in Jax Miller’s first novel, Freedom’s Child (HarperCollins, £12.99). Freedom isn’t her real name: she’s in the witness protection programme, working in a biker bar in a small town in Oregon, drinking until she blacks out. Once, she was Nessa Delany from Long Island, accused of killing her abusive husband, NYPD officer Mark, and forced to give her son and daughter up for adoption to keep them out of the clutches of his truly appalling family

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