![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It's set in northern Italy's Po valley and opens with a gripping, Dickensian description of relentless rainfall as the river bursts its banks. Varesi is well known in his native Italy, where his series featuring Commissario Soneri has been televised, but this is the first of his novels to be translated into English. River of Shadows, by Valerio Varesi, translated by Joseph Farrell (Maclehose Press, £16.99) Sensitive and insightful, with a mainly lesbian cast, it's as much a novel about rites of passage, formative influences, relationships and the contradictory nature of celebrity self-revelation as it is a murder mystery. Disgraced psychiatrist Charlie Flint receives a parcel of press cuttings, sent anonymously, and finds herself drawn into investigating the murder of a bridegroom at a wedding reception in the grounds of her alma mater. McDermid is a brave as well as a groundbreaking writer, and her treatment of the academic milieu – here, St Scholastica's women's college – is a world away from the male-dominated dreaming spires of Colin Dexter but no less riven by rivalry and conflict. ![]() Oxford has been so comprehensively annexed by Inspector Morse that it takes a brave writer to encroach on the territory. Trick of the Dark, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown, £18.99) ![]()
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