The Darker the Night by Martin Patience
Former BBC correspondent Martin Patience sets his debut novel The Darker the Night in the days leading up to a referendum on Scottish independence. Thanks to an expert campaign led by First Minister Susan Ward, the nationalists look set to win. But when senior civil servant John Millar is gunned down in a Glasgow alley on a rainy night, disaster seems likely to strike. Millar is found to be in possession of a video and a phone number that are incriminating.
Charged with solving the case is detective sergeant David “Big Davy” Bryant, who makes up for his lack of physical fitness with investigative instincts, a knowledge of his home ground, and some useful if dodgy connections to the criminal underworld.
Enter Fulton Mackenzie, an old-school hack who has experienced personal tragedy and is accustomed to looking beyond the obvious to discover the truth. Who was John Millar, he wants to know, and who wanted him taken out? Whoever is behind this murder is attempting to change the course of an entire nation’s future.
Calling the novel a brilliant debut, BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen says, “The Darker the Night pulled me in from the start and didn’t let go. The latest in a distinguished line of Scottish thriller writers, Martin Patience could do for his native Glasgow what Ian Rankin did for Edinburgh.”
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
In her latest novel, set in a fictional town in the southern Allegheny Mountains, Idra Novey tackles the decline and fall of small-town America, where communities are facing shrinking populations and economic collapse. Leah, stepdaughter of the cantankerous Jean, is on her way home for the first time in years, accompanied by her Peruvian husband and young son. Her estranged stepmother, who taught herself welding by watching YouTube videos, has left her a room full of huge metal art pieces.
It’s a tough journey through rural Pennsylvania. Leah stops at a petrol station festooned with US flags, where her Spanish-speaking family is greeted with hostility. When they get to her hometown, they find a rundown neighbourhood and a vulnerable community. Much like Jean’s art, this powerful story examines the ways people are able to transform the mundane into objects of beauty.
Vulture describes Novey as “one of the finest and bravest novelists working today”.
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Award-winning author Victor Lavalle has chosen a Western setting for his latest novel, which opens in 1915 with Adelaide Henry setting fire to her family’s farmhouse with their dead bodies inside. Driven by a need to erase her dreadful past, she leaves California for Montana. At first, she finds the people of Big Sandy friendly enough, but she soon realises that she’s a black woman in a very white town.
In an interview on publisher Random House’s YouTube channel, LaValle said, “The way I describe Lone Women to other people is I say, ‘Do you know anything about Montana’s history? Did you know that women homesteaded that land by themselves? Did you know that it wasn’t just white women — it was black women, Latinas, there were Chinese women there? Did you know any of that?’ And usually the answer is ‘no’ and then I say, ‘I’ve got a story for you’.”
Kirkus Reviews writes, “LaValle is prodigiously talented at playing with stylistic modes, and here he deftly combines Western, suspense, supernatural, and horror — his prose is unfussy and plain-spoken, which makes it easier to seamlessly skate across genres.”
Y/N by Esther Yi
Berlin-based Korean American writer Esther Yi’s debut novel is about — you guessed it — a Korean American woman living in Berlin. Her protagonist is obsessed with K-pop idol, the luminous Moon. When he vanishes from the public eye, she sets off to Seoul on a surreal quest that unpicks the culture of fandom and mass media associated with the K-pop phenomenon, a culture that equates success with physical beauty and extreme wealth. After a series of bizarre mishaps, she ends up at the offices of the entertainment company that manages Moon and his band, and it’s there that art and reality inevitably collide.
Esquire’s Adrienne Westenfeld writes, “This debut novel, a Kafkaesque fever dream about fandom and obsession, arrives right on time ... Haunting yet playful, immersive yet unreal, Y/N is a brilliant dissection of consumption in all its forms — how we consume art, and how it consumes us.”
Now I Am Here by Chidi Ebere
Born and raised in Oxford, Chidi Ebere spent some years in Nigeria before returning to the UK. A short story writer who now lives in Amsterdam, Now I Am Here is his first novel. Publisher Pan Macmillan has named it among the most anticipated reads of 2023, describing the novel as perfect for readers of Uzo Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation, Giles Foden’s The Last King of Scotland and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives.
The story begins at the end. The unnamed narrator and his comrades are surrounded by the National Defence Movement army. With defeat imminent, the narrator finds himself needing to confess his sins. As he tells the story of the series of events that have led to this present moment, he reveals how he was transformed from a good man into a monstrous war criminal, capable of committing acts so atrocious that his guilt is unbearable.
Ebere’s debut is a fascinating examination of how good people turn bad when provoked by external factors and the ferocity of war. It’s unflinching, thought-provoking and tragic, and its message is one for our times.
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