
Crime fiction: Megan Abbott, Elmore Leonard, Luke Beirne, Paul Vidich, Karin Slaughter and K Anis Ahmed
El Dorado Drive
(Virago, £22) is a dark, satisfying delight. Abbott's
writing
has always been hypnotic, projecting a powerful sense of women's inner lives and desires through the prisms of noir and suspense.
El Dorado Drive – her first novel explicitly set in her hometown, the archetypal old-money
Detroit
suburb of Grosse Pointe, where 'Eisenhower was still president' – anchors that strength in a newly intimate sense of place. Abbott also has some new razor-edged fun here with American suburbia's satire-ready pathologies as they break through the patina of country club life.
The three Bishop sisters take centre stage: Pam's ex has stolen their kids' college funds; Debra's helping her husband through chemo; and Harper's coping with a break-up. Born into comfort, these three 'never thought about money until it was gone and then it was all any of them thought about'.
Heavily indebted and newly evicted, Harper's crashing with Pam, who tells her about the Wheel. Ostensibly a women's support group, each meeting of the Wheel concludes with a woman receiving a pile of cash from the newest members. Although one character unconvincingly insists the Wheel's 'not a pyramid … It's a triangle,' Harper recognises it means 'selling the women you knew. Even the ones you loved,' by capitalising on their economic vulnerability. Struggling with her own secrets and debts, Harper sets aside her unease to join the group.
READ MORE
As the scheme plays out, a narcotic mix of regret, fear and love drives Abbott's characters forward, until someone winds up dead. The local cops, used to 'toilet paper vandalism and DUIs', are quickly out of their depth, leaving Harper to push for answers. As Harper tries to piece it all together, Abbott subtly moves her characters through slyly crafted surprises to a satisfying conclusion that betrays none of this book's intoxicating depth.
Another great Detroit-area writer, Elmore Leonard – one of America's most distinctive crime novelists – gets some well-designed reissues from the Penguin Modern Classics: Crime and Espionage list.
Like Abbott, Leonard has a gift for giving characters their own voices, his spare prose doing so as concisely as possible, even when – as in the lead reissue,
Rum Punch
(Penguin, £9.99) – describing extravagantly dramatic things like Nazi killing, gun running and money smuggling.
Elmore Leonard in Detroit, Michigan, in 1992. Photograph: Michael Brennan/Getty
Three of Rum Punch's main characters return from another welcome reissue, The Switch, where the kidnapping of a Detroit developer's wife very much fails to go as planned. Ordell, Louis and Melanie haven't grown noticeably luckier, smarter or kinder since then, but Rum Punch gets a different spark from airline steward Jackie, who's entangled in their schemes. Both more complex and easier to root for, Jackie is drawn as vividly as anything in Leonard's best work, and she makes Rum Punch sing.
Irish-Canadian journalist Luke Beirne's third novel, the quietly moving
Saints Rest
(Baraka Books, CAD$24.95), is set around St John, Newfoundland, an atmospherically drawn landscape that's key to the story.
Narrator Frank Cain is the junior member of a small PI agency, weighed down by a job that too often involves 'helping the rich stay rich and the poor stay hungry'. Warily, he takes on a new client, Malory Fleet, whose son Jason, a low-level dealer, was murdered exactly a year ago. Now, Jason's girlfriend Amanda has disappeared, and Malory, who sees her as a daughter, wants her back.
Immersing himself in the case, Frank soon loses his moorings, uncertain even whether Amanda fled or was taken. As he tries to find Amanda without losing himself along the way, Saints Rest unfolds quickly to a short, sharp shock of a conclusion.
Paul Vidich's
The Poet's Game
(No Exit, £18.99), an espionage thriller set in 2018 Washington and Moscow, is a worthy follow-up to his memorable Beirut Station. Vidich details political gamesmanship with an exactitude in the tradition of John le Carré, whose influence he ably honours.
A former CIA operative, Alex Matthews now runs Trinity Capital, a financial firm in Moscow, a city he knows well from his days as the CIA station chief. When the CIA director asks Alex back to help extricate an asset he recruited – code name Byron, the last remaining agent of his old network – Alex agrees.
His sense of duty lingers, though his commitment to the CIA had long been diminishing 'like a slow dusk' because of the agency's growing hypocrisy, leading to his marginalisation and early retirement. As Alex soon discovers, that institutional hypocrisy has endured: it looms large here, resting uneasily alongside his own love, guilt, and grief.
A tragic personal backstory reverberates throughout the novel, adding depth to Alex's character without overwhelming the central plot. The action moves ahead at an elegant pace and concludes on a pitch-perfect note.
Hugely popular bestseller Karin Slaughter starts a new series with
We Are All Guilty Here
(HarperCollins, £22). Although some of the seams show – this is a long book, full of plot twists and more than enough characters to populate several titles – Slaughter's clearly a real pro who's very, very skilled at what she does.
The propulsive first third captures the pressure between being a teen in a small town and the often naive helplessness of the adults struggling to love them. Desperate to be adults, Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker find themselves dangerously out of their depth. When they disappear, the community rushes to find them.
While trying to ensure that fear doesn't make neighbours 'tear each other apart', Deputy Emmy Clifton-Lang and her father Sheriff Gerald Clifton quickly find damning physical evidence, but their interrogations provide the leads that matter most.
Twelve years later, another girl disappears in disturbingly similar circumstances. This case throws its shadows over Emmy's own family, leaving bruises that will surely linger through the series. Embedded in its small Georgia town, We Are All Guilty Here stands out for often being as invested in these families as in the crimes they encounter.
Spinning a tale of hubris, Bangladesh memories, and exotic meats, K Anis Ahmed's
Carnivore
(HarperCollins, £16.99) is an energetic romp through a moneyed world that stops at nothing to feed its ego.
Bangladeshi emigrant Kash Mirza opened an exclusive Manhattan restaurant in the summer of 2008, when 'alpha-nerds with PhDs in stochastic mathematics or God-knows-what had no clue … markets would tank …everyone would be a millionaire.' Kash rode this wave as blindly as the rest, never anticipating the imminent crash. By the fall, though, those financial sharks 'turned into broken relics' and Kash faces being broken too, by Boris, a gangster from whom he borrowed a bit too much a bit too often. Trying to figure out how he landed in such a precarious situation, Kash summons the ghosts of his childhood and of his fellow ex-pats.
As Boris presses for repayment, cutting off Kash's pinky along the way, Carnivore follows Kash's increasingly inspired efforts to survive. He soon double-talks his way to a meeting with an international group of billionaire gastronomes, selling them an 'Evening of Danger' to appease their ennui.
As the novel moves to its culinary climax and Kash's rationalisations accumulate, Ahmed surrounds him with a vivid secondary cast, making this a charmingly gruesome depiction of his race for survival.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
US attorney general told Trump his name is among many in Epstein files, Wall Street Journal reports
US attorney general Pam Bondi told president Donald Trump in May his name appeared in justice department files related to financier Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing senior administration officials. Reuters was not able to immediately verify the Journal's report, which the White House characterised as 'fake news'. The newspaper's report threatened to expand what has become a political crisis for Mr Trump, whose past friendship with Epstein has drawn renewed scrutiny after his administration said it would not release the files, reversing a campaign promise. The justice department released a memo earlier this month that there was no basis to continue investigating the Epstein case, triggering a backlash among Mr Trump's political base, who demanded more information about wealthy and powerful people who had interacted with Epstein. READ MORE Mr Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein and has said their friendship ended before Epstein was first prosecuted. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty and the case was dismissed after his death. Under political pressure last week, Mr Trump directed the justice department to seek the release of sealed grand jury transcripts from the case. A federal judge denied that request earlier on Wednesday. While the White House immediately dismissed the report as fictitious, Ms Bondi and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche issued a statement that did not directly address the Wall Street Journal's reporting. [ Donald Trump sues Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal publisher for $10bn over Jeffrey Epstein report Opens in new window ] 'Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution, and we have filed a motion in court to unseal the underlying grand jury transcripts,' the officials said. 'As part of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings.' The Journal reported that Ms Bondi and her deputy told Mr Trump at a White House meeting that his name, as well as those of 'many other high-profile figures', appeared in the files. Last week, the newspaper reported that Mr Trump had sent Epstein a bawdy birthday note in 2003 that ended, 'Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.' Reuters has not confirmed the authenticity of the alleged letter. Mr Trump has sued the Journal and its owners, including billionaire Rupert Murdoch, asserting that the birthday note was fake. Since the justice department's memo, Mr Trump has faced growing frustration among his base of supporters, after far-right figures spent years promoting conspiracy theories – at times echoed by Mr Trump – about Epstein and alleged ties to prominent Democratic politicians. Epstein hung himself in prison in 2019, according to the New York City chief medical examiner. But his connections with wealthy and powerful individuals prompted speculation that his death was not a suicide. The justice department said in its memo this month that it had concluded Epstein died by his own hand. [ Top Republican Mike Johnson shuts US Congress early to avoid Epstein vote Opens in new window ] In a sign of how the issue has bedevilled Mr Trump and his fellow Republicans, US House speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday abruptly said he would send lawmakers home for the summer a day early to avoid a floor fight over a vote on the Epstein files. His decision temporarily stymied a push by Democrats and some Republicans for a vote on a bipartisan resolution that would require the justice department to release all Epstein-related documents. More than two-thirds of Americans believe the Trump administration is hiding information about Epstein's clients, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week. Wednesday's court motion stemmed from federal investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents. US district judge Robin Rosenberg found that the justice department's request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret. The justice department also has pending requests to unseal transcripts in Manhattan federal court related to later indictments brought against Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her conviction for child sex trafficking and other crimes. – Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025


Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Irish Times
Coldplay couple Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot are victims of online mob justice
Coldplay haven't had a hit single in years. Last week, as the memes were quick to point out, they may have made two. A couple at a Coldplay concert in Massachusetts face the stage in classic concert cuddle , basking in the glow of some earnest stadium pop. Until, that is, they realise they are on the jumbotron. She covers her face; he slides downwards out of frame like the ground has opened to swallow him. 'Oh look at these two,' a jovial Chris Martin can be heard to say, 'They're either having an affair or they're very shy'. The internet was on hand to clarify. He was Andy Byron, chief executive of tech company Astronomer. She was Kristin Cabot, its head of human resources. They were married, but not to each other. Internet sleuths posted their names to TikTok and pasted screenshots of Byron's spouse on his LinkedIn page. Byron was placed on administrative leave and later resigned . Grace Springer, the Coldplay fan who caught the moment on camera, is using her fame to pay off student loans. Astronomy enjoyed new notoriety. Brands piled into the comments, vying to cash in on a viral moment: 'If either of their spouses are seeing this, Opendoor can help you move ... and quick ...' posted one removal company. The state of Massachusetts abolished public disgrace – the stocks, whipping and pillory (public shaming) – in 1805 on the advice of criminologists, who claimed it only satisfied the public appetite for vengeance. Before then, it was a popular punishment and prime entertainment, as vendors swarmed to the scene of any righteous mob. Today, public disgrace is popular once more, and a powerful tool for shaping behaviour. It's not the first time the internet has dedicated its hive mind to public vitriol. In 2013, a PR representative, Justine Sacco, made a badly judged tweet before boarding a plane to South Africa. 'Going to Africa. Hope I don't get aids. Just kidding. I'm white!'. 'It was a joke about a dire situation that does exist in post-apartheid South Africa that we don't pay attention to,' Sacco told the journalist Jon Ronson. When Sacco's plane landed in Cape Town 11 hours later, the hashtag '#hasjustinelandedyet?' was trending on Twitter. She was the most hated person on the internet. She lost her job; her South African relatives felt disgraced. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that four forces regulate behaviour: law, markets, norms, and architecture. To stop speeding near a school, for example, you can pass a law, impose fines (a market deterrent), rely on norms that speeding is bad, or redesign the road with speed bumps – an architecture that removes choice. In Code Is Law, Lessig warned that digital life shifts power to architecture: platforms and algorithms hard-code what we can do, often invisibly. That's true – but incomplete. The internet is also highly normative. Algorithms don't just determine what appears on your feed or if you land a job interview; they also shape and amplify norms; they stoke moral outrage. Algorithms reward virility, and vitriol spreads faster than nuance. The threat of online shaming or 'cancellation' now operates as soft control, supercharged by code. 'Why do you care so much what other people think?' my mother (and Marcus Aurelius) both pondered at various points in history. The answer might be evolutionary. Humans are hypersocial; we're primed to care what others make of us. In the past, being cast out wasn't just sad and lonely – it was terminal. Or worse: 'Ignomy is universally acknowledged to be a worse fate than death,' wrote the founding father Benjamin Rush, more than two centuries before the term 'cancel culture' entered the lexicon. Adultery and bad jokes are not crimes, but public shame can make them feel like a capital offence, without the safeguards of due process. Byron and Cabot, caught on a kiss cam, won't face court, just global humiliation. Careers, families, and reputations can vanish overnight. Their mistake will echo for eternity in countless memes and screengrabs more permanent than any legal record. Movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter showed the potential power of swarm activism. In these cases, people without a voice challenged power and called for change – to the norms that meant women were supposed to smile through everyday harassment or that people of colour should overlook everything from microaggression to brutal assault. The mob called for grassroots justice in the absence of institutional accountability. Some norms began to, slowly, change and change for the better. But somewhere along the way, what looked a bit like activism morphed into social censure, where strangers on the internet survey and condemn each other's choices and beliefs. We've resurrected the pillory, but now it's powered by an algorithm that monetises our moral outrage. The Coldplay couple may or may not deserve our sympathy – frankly, it's none of our business – but the sheer force of the swarm should give us pause. If ignominy was once a fate worse than death, what do we call a shame that's permanent, borderless, and always online? Two hundred years after Massachusetts tore down the stocks, we built them back up. Now they fit in our pockets.


Irish Times
18 hours ago
- Irish Times
Trump accuses Obama of ‘treason' over 2016 election in stunning attack
There is a peculiar deal that world leaders must make with themselves when they sit down beside president Donald Trump in the Oval Office . Yes, they are entering the sanctuary of arguably the most fabled political office in the world. But they are also entering the stream of consciousness of Donald J Trump himself, bystanders and props in whatever subject on which he feels the need to vent. On Tuesday, it was the turn of the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. After a few civil remarks about the historic and economic relations between the nations and an inevitable trade agreement, Marcos was invited to sit back and watch as his host accused a former US president, Barack Obama , of 'treason' and 'sedition'. The president spoke quickly and fluently and at length and managed to not once mention the name of the ghost who hangs over a stagnant summer week in Washington, DC, Jeffrey Epstein. The clamour, from Republican Maga supporters and several prominent legislators, to release the files into the public domain will not die down. Over on Capitol Hill, House speaker Mike Johnson called an early summer recess rather than take a vote on the issue of releasing the files on the investigation into the late financier. Meanwhile, it was announced that the Department of Justice would seek to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the former English newspaper baron Robert Maxwell, and a former girlfriend of Epstein's, at her Florida prison. She is currently serving 20 years for sex trafficking minors in consortium with Epstein. She remains the lone conviction in the Epstein investigation. READ MORE President Trump cocked an ear when this issue was brought up in the Oval Office before launching into a surreal attack on the 44th president. 'I don't know anything about it,' Trump began when Ghislaine Maxwell's name bounced around the walls of the Oval Office – a weird moment in itself. 'They're going to what ... meet her? Yeah, I don't know about it but I think it is something that sounds appropriate to do.' Among the officials involved in that interview would be Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's personal attorney during last year's Manhattan trial and now the deputy attorney general of the United States. President Donald Trump and president Ferdinand Marcos Jr of the Philippines speak in the Oval Office of the White House. Photograph: Kenny Holston/The New York Times 'I have no concern,' Trump said in relation to that. 'He's a very talented person. He's very smart. I didn't know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's sort of a witch hunt. The witch hunt you should be talking about is they caught president Obama absolutely cold. Tulsi Gabbard. What they did to this country starting in 2016 but going up to 2020 – they tried to rig the election. And they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences for that. After what they did to me, whether it is right or wrong it is time to start going after people. Obama has been caught directly. His orders are on the papers. The papers are signed. They were highly classified. And what they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It is criminal at the highest level.' The 'papers' referenced by Trump related to last week's report issued by Tulsi Gabbard, his national security director, on the 2016 election that claimed to show 'a treasonous conspiracy' to insinuate Russian electoral voting interference designed to harm Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton that November. Senior Democrats dismissed the report as error strewn and either inept or mischievous in its finding. Virginia senator Mark Warner, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, argued that the report mixed two distinct issues: Russian hacking into voting systems and Russian influence on public opinion. 'We're talking about apples and oranges,' Warner said. 'The Russians were not successful at manipulating our election infrastructure, nor did we say they were.' Obama and Trump's most recent public interaction took place on the snowy January morning when they chatted and laughed amicably in their pew as they gathered with the other living presidents – George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden – for the funeral of Jimmy Carter. But on a swampy July morning, Trump once again cast Obama as his nemesis and suggested that the former president should be the primary target of an investigation. It was an audacious diversionary tactic, like attempting to draw the crowd away from one circus by setting up another in the adjacent field and promising more lions, more fire-eaters. 'Well based on what I read – and I read pretty much what you read – it should be president Obama. He started it. And Biden – he was there with him. And Comey. Right here. This is the room. It is much more beautiful now, but that's okay. It's there. He's guilty. This was treason. This was ... every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody has ever even imagined.' 'This man', he said, remembering Marcos for a second, 'has seen some pretty rough countries but you have never seen anything like it. President Obama – it was his concept, his idea. But he also got it from Hillary Clinton, crooked Hillary Clinton. This is the biggest scandal in the history of our country. And it really goes on to even the autopen because it all relates to [the] same thing. It all started – the same sick minds. The autopen was used by people and Biden knew nothing about it.' It was a stunning attack and one that could add to a complex mess that is of the Republicans' own creation. For the first time, the decision not to release the Epstein files has caused a serious breach of faith between Trump and prominent Maga figures. Now, he is promising an investigation into president Obama which he knows either will not happen or lead to nothing. Having called those supporters pushing for more clarity on the Epstein files 'stupid' last week, he now risks stretching their incredulity to breaking point. Obama, who has remained above the fray to a degree that has frustrated many Democrats, issued a swift and scornful dismissal through his spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush. 'Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then Chairman Marco Rubio.' House speaker Mike Johnson affected the role of patient pastor as he made light of the Repubican rebellion. Photograph:By Tuesday evening, a gathering of Republican lawmakers was under way in the White House as president Trump heaped lavish praise on speaker Mike Johnson. In the morning, Johnson had defended his decision to announce summer recess a week early, announcing that 'there is no daylight between the White House and the House.' But some Republicans have, for the first time, begun to ask questions which president Trump could do without. One of their number, Thomas Massie, is in outright revolt in his determination to have the Epstein files released. Johnson affected the role of patient pastor to a sometimes unruly flock as he made light of this rebellion. 'Some people I try to protect from themselves. They kick and scream and bite their own colleagues. I don't understand Thomas Massie's motivation. He could have brought his discharge petition any time over the past four-and-a-half years. I try to follow Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment – never speak ill of another Republican. My gosh, it's hard to do sometimes. Bless his heart. I don't know what else to say about it.' Reagan's old edict has been one that Republican representatives and senators have followed devoutly through the first six months of this term. But for the first time now come whispers of discontent. Meanwhile, old photographs and snatches of film keep lurching out of the 1990s, when Trump was just a big-haired scenester in Manhattan, out on the town with Epstein. The dead financier's brother, Mark, described them on Tuesday evening as 'best friends'. Mark Epstein has no issues about his late brother's guilt. But he believes he was murdered in the Manhattan correction centre. Donald Trump's on-the-town times with Epstein were a full decade before the revelations into the financier's sexual abuse of minors were investigated. There has been no suggestion that Trump had knowledge of Epstein's crimes. But the entire saga and something about the idea of the release of the files has left him addled. He has lost his grip on the narrative and it hovers now on the skyline over Capitol Hill like a massive, ominous hot air balloon that he cannot make disappear. The late night talkshow satirists are gleefully sharpening pencils. The jokes are incessant. And at the heart of this, unanswered questions as to who knew what about a monstrous dead guy who sexually abused minors while schmoozing with the 'elite' of American society a couple of decades ago. One of those victims, Virginia Giuffre, the woman whose testimony was crucial in Epstein's 2019 arrest, took her own life in April, aged 41. Her name has scarcely been mentioned throughout this entire bleak fiasco.