Any new novel by John Harvey is cause for celebration. He produces beautifully written, solidly engineered crime stories that probe the flaws and sensitivities of British society. Gone to Ground (William Heinemann, £12.99) begins with the murder of Stephen Bryan, a lecturer in media studies bludgeoned to death in the shower of his house in Cambridge. The narrative focuses on the investigations of two police officers and of Bryan’s sister, a journalist. The victim was homosexual, and the police are open to the possibility that either a former lover or a casual pick-up may have been responsible. But Bryan’s laptop is missing, and another line of investigation leads to a book he was writing. This is a biography of Stella Leonard, a minor British filmstar of the 1950s best known for her role in the noir thriller Shattered Glass. Leonard’s maverick great niece, herself an actress, is due to star in a remake, and fragments of film script are scattered through the text. Gone to Ground is a powerful novel with an unusual depth of characterisation, and it lingers in the mind after you’ve finished it.
The Savage Garden (HarperCollins, £12.99) is Mark Mills’ second novel, following his debut The Whaleboat House, which won the John Creasey Dagger. Adam Strickland graduates from Cambridge in 1958 with a degree in art history. His professor arranges for him to spend a few weeks in Tuscany, studying the garden of the Villa Docci. Laid out in the 16th century to commemorate a dead wife, it is an enigmatic survival from another age, its groves and grottoes encoding their secret meanings in the complex symbolic language of neo-classical horticulture. The house, its garden and its inhabitants shelter more recent secrets, notably the truth behind the murder of one of the family during the closing hours of the German occupation. Not all secrets are in the past: Adam gradually realises that he is in danger of becoming a puppet in a contemporary drama unfolding around him. The book has perhaps too many literary echoes, and some of its surprises do not altogether surprise. But there is real talent here — a fine sense of period and place, a well-managed narrative, crisp prose and fascinating information about the iconography of Renaissance gardens. Mills is one to watch.
A rather different Italy forms the backdrop of Saturnalia (Century, £17.99). Lindsey Davis’s Falco returns to the mean streets of first-century Rome where he plies his dangerous trade as an informer. This time a formidable high-profile state prisoner, a German priestess, has gone missing just before she was to due to be displayed to the populace of the city. Falco, who has negotiated with the woman before, is hired by the Palace to recapture her as swiftly and secretly as possible. Unfortunately Anacrites the Chief Spy, Falco’s inveterate enemy, is also on the trail. The plot mushrooms out from this premise to encompass among many other things Falco’s missing dog, some splendid neologisms, a foster daughter from Britannia, a Vestal virgin and of course the season of Misrule.
Historical crime fiction is often rather heavy-going — light literature’s equivalent to suet pudding. Saturnalia has more in common with a soufflé. Lindsey Davis brings a lightness of touch to her subject. Nevertheless her research is admirably thorough, and she creates a fascinating picture of ancient Rome, one that emphasises both its parallels with the modern world and its remoteness from us. Falco is often compared to Chandler’s Philip Marlowe but he is much less mannered and in some ways far more cynical. A welcome addition to a fine series.
Italy must be the favourite foreign destination of English-speaking crime writers. Donna Leon’s Suffer the Little Children (William Heinemann, £15.99) is the latest title in another long-running series set there, this time in contemporary Venice. Commissario Brunetti, who bucks genre tradition by being happily married, investigates a violent assault on a paediatrician which culminated in the kidnapping of the victim’s 18-month old son. But there’s a twist: the men who took the baby were Carabinieri cracking down on a baby smuggling racket. Another strand deals with corrupt pharmacists. Leon touches on an interesting line of thought — the way an overwhelming conviction of personal rectitude can become a force for evil, blighting the lives of other people and ultimately consuming its possessor. Taken as a whole, however, Suffer the Little Children is a relatively slight novel compared with some others in the series. But there’s no doubting Leon’s knowledge of her setting and the book will please her many fans.
Andrew Taylor’s latest novel is A Stain on the Silence (Penguin).
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