The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £18.99)
Foley’s latest novel is set on the picturesque Dorset coast, where Francesca Meadows has turned the grand house she inherited into a sumptuously Instagrammable eco retreat called The Manor. None of this pleases the locals, some of whom have scores to settle with Francesca. While she prepares for a lavish summer solstice celebration, complete with the eponymous feast, they are busy conducting a campaign of disruption. We know from the start that things haven’t gone well at The Manor. There’s a house fire, and a body is discovered at the bottom of a cliff, and we shift back and forth in time from before the celebration to after and, finally, during as the story unfolds through the multiple narrators. Most of them, from entitled and hypocritical Francesca to mysterious Bella, have something to hide. Foley deftly keeps all the plates – old resentments, terrible secrets, new age woo-woo, and a side order of folk horror – spinning for a tense, atmospheric read.
Death in the Air by Ram Murali (Atlantic, £16.99)
Ram Murali’s debut novel also features a luxury retreat where things go horribly wrong – here, the location is Rishikesh in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, an ideal set-up for a White Lotus/Agatha Christie-style “‘closed world” mystery mashup. Charming, affluent and well-educated Ro Krishna finds himself at Samsara, an opulent Ayurvedic spa, where the guests include a film star and his CIA-connected wife, an Indian politician and his stupendously rich spouse, as well as an old school friend and the beautiful and mysterious Amrita Dey. When the latter is found murdered, Ro, who has a legal background, is co-opted by Samara’s no-nonsense matriarch owner, Mrs Banerjee, to conduct his own inquiry in parallel to the police investigation, in between sessions of meditation and yoga. Despite some heavy-handed foreshadowing and a framing device that feels unnecessary, Death in the Air is certainly a page-turner: smart, funny and compelling.
The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal (Picador, £18.99)
Macneal’s third novel is a wonderfully atmospheric thriller set in the early Victorian period, when London’s “magnificent seven” major cemeteries were being built to cope with the capital’s burgeoning population. Runaway Bonnie knows that she is in thrall to conniving Crawford but cannot help herself. When one of their criminal schemes goes wrong, she needs a place to hide and, at his urging, goes into domestic service at a gothic revival house at Twickenham. The owner is obsessed with creating a mausoleum for his wife, who died in mysterious circumstances, while their daughter writes love letters to herself – and Bonnie begins to realise that Crawford has plans for all of them. With an appealingly flawed protagonist and plenty of period detail, this is an immersive and creepy read.
French Windows by Antoine Laurain, translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Gallic, £16.99)
There are echoes of Hitchcock’s Rear Window in French bestselling author Laurain’s latest novel, which begins when a photographer, Nathalia Guitry, loses her ability to work after inadvertently capturing a murder on camera, and sinks into inertia. Her psychoanalyst, Dr Faber, suggests she relight her creative fire by writing stories about the people she can see through the windows of the building opposite her home, working from the bottom floor to the top. Each of these vivid accounts, which include an actor turned YouTuber and a songwriter who is forced to choose between his family and his cat, is a satisfying tale about a person who makes a life-changing decision. Dr Faber begins to suspect that the stories are not entirely made up – and then, as Nathalia reaches the top floor, by which time, Dr Faber has promised, “we’ll have made a great deal of progress”, things start to get very dark indeed. Admirably concise; intriguing, comic and poignant by turns, this is a sheer delight.
The Man in Black & Other Stories by Elly Griffiths (Quercus, £22)
Taking in everything from disappearing women and prehistoric families, to faith, mythology and the eerie arrival of a stranger on a winter’s night, in settings that include London’s theatreland, the rapidly eroding Norfolk coast and a Nile cruise, this short-story collection includes both original and previously published cosy crime, psychological suspense and ghost stories. As well as a sprinkling of standalone mysteries, there are tales featuring Griffiths’s best-loved characters, including forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway, DCI Harry Nelson and Cathbad the druid, as well as DI Harbinder Kaur and Max Mephisto from her two more recent series, and a grown-up version of Justice Jones from her children’s books. While newcomers to Griffiths’s work are probably best off beginning with one of the novels, this compilation will be a perfect holiday treat for fans.
