To The Last Page

You don't associate David Mark with international espionage thrillers, but the author of the famed DS McAvoy series and other dark crime fiction works successfully across a number of genres including historical fiction ( Anatomy of a Heretic ) and even a mental health memoir ( Piece of Mind ). As a genre however, for me spy thrillers are something of a genre of the past, made almost redundant not just by the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, but by the internet. Who needs to send agents into the field nowadays when you can employ hackers and deploy drones? There are exceptions to every rule and - again from a personal perspective - there are a few authors who keep the spy thriller relevant and exciting, managing to bring a contemporary feel to an old school of writing. In my limited reading in the genre, Mick Herron stands out with his Jackson Lamb/Slough House series, just about managing to keep one step ahead of the absurdity of modern day political and establishmen...

We usually know where Corto Maltese stands in terms of political allegiances, which is less to do with ideology than being in the side of the ordinary people against oppression, on the anti imperialist and anti-colonialist side of any conflict - but more often he remains romantically more than ideologically involved. That's the case when in Concerto in O' minore per arpa e nitroglierina he arrives in Ireland in 1917 just after the Easter Uprising to find trouble on the streets of Dublin. Soldiers patrolling in 'autoblindos' armoured cars come under attack from a group of IRA operatives led by Banshee O'Dannan. Corto's first objective is not to get involved in the struggle, but to visit the grave of the recently deceased Pat Finnucan. When he is asked what is is looking for, he replies in his usual wry manner ' La pentola d'oro del lepricano ' (The leprechaun's pot of gold). Finnucan had been the leader of Sinn Féin, hoping to take the revolution...

Well, I can't dispute the fact that The Skeleton Key  lives up to its title and the premise that is imprinted on the front cover as "One book. Two families. A Lifetime of Obsession". That comes through abundantly clearly in Erin Kelly's writing and its focus on Eleanor, the young woman caught up in a very unusual family situation. Fifty years ago, her artist father Frank Churcher hit upon an idea of creating a kind of treasure hunt puzzle in a children's book, 'The Golden Bones'. He had no idea of how it would capture the imagination of treasure seekers all over the world, and indeed cause no small amount of disruption to the lives of his and his friend Lal's family. The game, the wealth and the honours that came with it were welcome, but some controversy as well and even some deaths as the final key to the puzzle has remained undiscovered for decades. For Frank's daughter, Eleanor, it was a much more serious matter. Her name is close to her namesa...