Book reviews: A Cupboard Full of Coats | Murder Club

A Cupboard Full of Coats, by Yvvette Edwards

Ooneworld £8.99 ***

Jinx is a young woman living in Hackney. She’s an embalmer. She’s deeply troubled. On the first page, she tells you she killed her mother. Now she’s living in her mother’s house. She doesn’t live with her young son. There s a knock at the door. It s Lemon, an old friend; he originates from Montserrat, in the Caribbean, like Jinx s mother. We know, from the start, that Lemon’s presence will force Jinx to dig up the nasty stuff she s been living with. The story is well told; I whizzed through it.

Murder Club, by Mark Pearson

Arrow, £6.99 ***

FIRST, we meet the detective, Jack Delaney. He’s boozing and snorting cocaine in a bar in Shepherd’s Bush. Then he has sex with someone in the pub garden. He’s got issues. Next, we meet a lady on her way home from a blind date in Soho, getting the train at Marylebone. Then we meet Andrew Johnson. He seems like a total creep. He is a sex beast. He likes trains. Something terrible happens. Will the coke-snorting, sex-mad Delaney solve it? Sharp, snappy, horrid, very readable.

I’m With the Bears, edited by Mark Martin

Verso, £8.99 ****

Short stories, all with an environmental theme. There’s an impassioned introduction by Bill Mckibben. He tells us about 2010 being the warmest year ever, about ice melting, about a heatwave in Russia. There’s a story by Helen Simpson, set in 2040, about what might happen if our worst nightmares come true. There are stories by TC Boyle, Toby Litt and David Mitchell, and Margaret Atwood writes a history of the human race, in the form of a time capsule.

Book reviews: A Cupboard Full of Coats | Murder Club | I’m With the Bears