The Illusionist
Robert Hutton
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25, pp354
If you saw Dominic West wearing women’s clothes in the recent TV drama SAS: Rogue Heroes and wanted to know why, Hutton’s enthralling true-life thriller will explain all. West’s character, Colonel Dudley Clarke, was a distinguished officer whose buffoonery concealed a strategic mind that plotted Operation Cascade, a piece of military sleight of hand that flummoxed the Nazis and helped change the course of the second world war. Hutton uses valuable new material and witty insight to restore the reputation of the louche but brilliant Clarke.
The Borrowed Hills
Scott Preston
John Murray, £16.99, pp261
Preston’s ambitious debut novel has a noble but surprising aim at its heart: to take the traditions of the western and move them to the hills and valleys of Cumbria. It follows two farmers, Steve Elliman and William Herne, whose flocks have been devastated by foot-and-mouth disease. In an effort to save their livelihoods, they are drawn into a perilous criminal scheme that could either rescue or ruin them. Equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Ross Raisin, this is a lyrical and readable account of desperate men.
Second Self
Chloë Ashby
Trapeze, £9.99, pp304 (paperback)
Ashby is a distinguished art critic as well as a novelist, and so it is appropriate that in her second novel she should explore the personal travails of her main characters, Cathy and Noah, with all the insight and compassion that she brings to her criticism. They have decided that they don’t want children, which seems fine until Cathy begins to wonder if she has made the decision she truly wants or the one that is expected from her. Ashby shows a fine grasp of the cultured, semi-bohemian milieu she depicts.
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