Two very different books, equally distinctive, grace the August lists. Bury Your Secrets by M. R. Mackenzie (Mad House, £9.99) is as accomplished as the author’s earlier Anna Scavolini series, with the covering up of a death having grim consequences for a group of friends. As I’ve written before, the Scottish writer M.R. (Michael) Mackenzie — as well as being a highly adroit crime novelist — is a producer of Blu-Rays and an informed specialist on such subjects as the Italian giallo, so it’s hardly surprising that his writing has a notably cinematic edge — the reader always knows exactly where they are, both in terms of locale and incident; very much the case with Bury Your Secrets.
Contemporary German crime fiction is studded with gems, such as Punishment (Baskerville, £10) by Munich-born Ferdinand Von Schirach, ably translated by Katharina Hall. It’s reminiscent of John Grisham’s The Firm, with a compromised young lawyer trying to come to terms with slippery concepts of justice at her new firm. Von Schirach’s own legal background imparts an acute veracity.
Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films’
