If it’s a cosy murder mystery you’re after, with comedy, this would be an excellent choice

This week it’s all fiction, though it’s a very diverse bundle.

Vera, or Faith, Gary Sheyngart, Atlantic, €18.75

Vera Bradford-Schmulkin is 10 years old, a watchful, anxious, over-achieving kid living in New York about five minutes into the future, in a ‘post-democratic’ America. After a lifetime of attaining As in every subject in school, she has recently attained a B. It’s a family tragedy. Her father is editor of a left-leaning magazine he hopes to sell to a European investor, and her stepmother is tired of ‘trad wife’ duties, while her younger brother is a moron with a penchant for exposing himself to strangers. Vera keeps a diary, which she calls her Things I Still Need to Know Diary and it’s through that we get to see an uncomfortably dystopian Trump’s America, where your self-drive car can betray you to the Feds and women crossing state lines must first be tested for their last menstruation date. And yet it’s funny. It really is hilarious, as Vera or Faith takes off on a road trip (in a self-drive car) across the USA to find her birth mother. Highly original and yet chillingly prescient, this is a smart satire on both the way America is now, and the fresh hells that await it.

Getting Away, Kate Sawyer, Zaffre, €17.99

This is a multi-generational story of the summer holidays of a family from 1938 up to the present day, through which the author maps the social history of Britain from then till now. It’s a clever idea and the story engages the reader from the outset. 1938 is the year that Britain introduced the Holiday with Pay Act, guaranteeing workers paid holiday leave for the first time. Not everybody behaves well here and there are plenty of ‘holiday epiphany’ moments. The Smith family begin as an ordinary working-class family taking their holidays not too far from home, but as the decades roll by and foreign holidays become the norm, we get a bird’s eye view of a changing UK, and of the tragedies and traumas that the family experienced across 920 years of rapid change. Sawyer is a fine writer, and this novel wears its meticulous research lightly. It’s been a hit over the summer, well worth reading.

Fulvia, Kaarina Parker, Manilla Press, €20.30

Fulvia was a Roman aristocrat, born in the late Roman Republic and married firstly to Clodius and later to Marc Antony. This reimagining of her life is full of descriptions of the monuments, many still there, that were built in the heyday of the empire. Fulvia was never interested in ‘traditional’ women’s values. Plutarch said of her that she wanted to rule rulers and command commanders. Apparently, she succeeded in what was, to put it mildly, a man’s world. After her father’s death, Fulvia moves from the Etruscan countryside to the city of Rome, intent on marrying into wealth and influence. This novel (there’s bound to be a sequel) covers mostly her marriage to Clodius and how she influences him into transforming himself from a rather hedonistic and aimless young Roman aristocrat to the powerful senator he was to become. Deftly written and a real education for lots of us, it’s a fascinating read.

Notes on Infinity, Austin Taylor, Michael Joseph, €16.99

This is the story of two young Harvard students, Zoe and Jack, who develop a successful anti-ageing drug, and what happens to them as a result. They eventually drop out of Harvard, managing to get significant funding to develop the drug, called Manna. They quickly get caught up in the fame of it all, with Porsches and TED talks and being featured in the various glossy mags becoming their lifestyle. Jack’s friend Carter is taken on board but there’s trouble afoot when Zoe, up to now Jack’s girlfriend as well as business partner, falls for Carter and a love triangle ensues. In a kind of ‘he said/she said’ narrative, quite heavy on scientific detail that can be distracting, we learn the fate of the couple and of their great scientific discovery. It’s a commentary on the current culture of startups and the kind of mad money they attract, and of what can happen when these bright young things, just kids really, are over-feted and overindulged.

Where All Roads Meet, Marie O’Connor, Poolbeg, €16.99

Garda Caitlin Kennedy is a busy woman. She jogs and plays camogie and even drove in rally once – and she’s happy with her job in Ballytur, the backwater west of Ireland village in which she’s stationed. But when a murder case she’s involved in takes an odd and dangerous turn, Caitlin finds herself in the olive groves of Italy as part of the investigation. Nice work if you can get it. It’s the early 1960s and Ireland is looking forward to a visit by JFK. When an old flame from a local lady’s past turns up in Ballintur, only to be found dead by the following day, Caitlin needs to find out who did it and why. This is O’Connor’s second novel, her first one also set in the fictional Ballytur, and if it’s a cosy murder mystery you’re after, not without its comedy, this would be an excellent choice.

The Dead and the Dying, Lin Anderson, Macmillan, €29

The novel is set in Orkney, where a pod of whales end up beached while they attempt to protect a new mother and her calf. As rescuers get busy trying to get the whales back to safety, they discover human remains that have been buried there for about 20 years. Enter forensic scientist Rhona McLeod, heroine of Anderson’s murder mysteries, and Detective McNab, seconded from Glasgow. This is a gritty Scots Noir novel from an author who’s been hailed as ‘the best crime writer in Scotland since Ian Rankin’ and this tense and twisty plot certainly keeps you turning the pages.

Footnotes

An early heads-up that the Murder One Crime Fiction Festival, which has really taken off in recent years, is happening from Friday October 17 to Sunday October 19 and tickets are selling fast. See murderone.ie for details.