** Standing in the Shadows by Peter Robinson

In Standing in the Shadows, an unsolved murder from the past unfolds against a contemporary mystery, to find a satisfying double resolution in the end. Inspector Banks returns with his jazz albums and literary references. It’s a clever plot but I found it too slow-moving.

* The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy

The Other Side of Night stars a female police officer who got fired after what we know from the start is a witch hunt. She is trying to solve a complicated crime who forces her to investigate a past lover. The plot gets more and more convoluted and other-worldly, which is not my cup of tea and got me hoping for a swift ending. Too bad because the premise was certainly intriguing.

*** Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting offers a sweet romp with an ad-hoc community of London commuters, brought together by a hastily swallowed grape that requires a Heimlich maneuver and subsequently encourages the participants to, gasp, introduce themselves. Soon, they are helping each other with work networking, romance-making, and surviving the tough world of high school. The story is a lot deeper than it could be and a great way to escape into a kinder, gentler world.

** Trio by William Boyd

Trio reminded me of This Must Be The Place because it takes place on a movie set and the heroine is the main actress, who also runs away, but the story is much different, much less ambitious in scope and set squarely within a couple of months in 1968, with very few references to past events. Here, three of the characters, the actress, the director’s wife, and the producer, have complicated back stories that will create havoc for the movie and have various consequences for them. There are lots of adventures but overall it’s a fairly shallow romp.

*** The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams

The Liar’s Dictionary gives us two intertwined stories: that of the bumbling lexicographer who decides to insert his own, delightfully made-up words into the dictionary, and a young intern who, decades later, tries to find and remove his inventions while simultaneously dealing with repeated threatening phone calls. I felt the stories took some time to take root, and velocity, but they are delightful and the characters’ personal stories are charming and surprising as well.

*** Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre

I’ve said before that I find spy novels silly, but I loved this spy biography. Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy tells the life of a dedicated communist woman who fled the Nazis and signed up with the USSR intelligence agency, meeting amazing successes, in part because no one could believe that a woman could be a spy. Sexism is good for some things, I guess. She managed to have several husbands and lovers, and three children, across multiple countries, all without being found out. It’s a fascinating life, with the great mystery of why a foreign agent would keep going even after the more unsavory aspects of the USSR came to light.

** Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain is growing up with his alcoholic mother, who wants to lead a refined life but has been betrayed by her husband and just cannot cope. As a child, and then a teenager, he tries to help her even as his older siblings leave one by one, his grandparents die, and he is mercilessly bullied by other children who resent his mother’s haughty way and cannot abide his gayness. It’s very dark, with only a few kind scenes, some with his older brother who does try to help, and some with a friend whose mother is also an alcoholic.

The overall dreariness and dramatic social plunge reminded me of the classic Germinal novel, which also takes place in a mining town. Quite an old-fashioned, over-the-top dramatic tone to convey the struggles of poverty.

***A Bitter Feast by Deborah Crombie

A Bitter Feast opens in a dreamy Cotswolds mansion for a comfortable weekend featuring a gourmet lunch prepared by the local pub owner, whose Michelin-starred pedigree makes for much more ambitious fare that can be expected in a standard pub. But deaths accumulate in the small village and soon it’s clear that the chef’s past has literally come back to haunt her, and the guests have to shift to their usual detective work. I particularly enjoyed two delightful portraits of a teenager and a chid that find a bond.

** How to Treat People by Molly Case

How to Treat People: A Nurse’s Notes is an earnest account of a British nurse’s worklife, intertwined with an account of her father’s medical journey. The overall effect is a little too workmanlike. My favorite parts of the books are when she describes the exquisite are and efforts deployed by her and other nurses to communicate with difficult, resistant patients, gently convincing them to submit to the treatments. There are many difficult patients out there!

** A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin

A Life of My Own is a memoir by a writer who specializes in biographies, so it’s an opportunity to observe a professional at work. She includes plenty of personal commentary on her own life, from her fractured childhood between divorced parents, at a time when it was a matter of shame, and during WWII to boot, to her own difficult marriage, and moving accounts of her children, living and dead, and an especially poignant portrait of a son who was born with spina bifida. Her professional life, although very successful in the end, was tough at first, when she could not find a professional job despite her Cambridge degrees. Society has made some progress since then, it seems.