Sunday Selection - Tyler, Nunn, Van Der Vlugt

An interesting crop of new and forthcoming books this week – they all seem rather tempting to me.

No sooner have I lavished (very well deserved) praise on L.C. Tyler’s debut novel, than I receive a copy of his second book, A Very Persistent Illusion, again published by Macmillan New Writing. This novel does not feature the luckless crime noveliste Ethelred Tressider (although we are promised Ethelred will return before long) but is instead ‘a darkly comic novel about family, madness and the nature of reality’. The main character is Chris Sorensen, a middle manager and closet poet.

Over the years, quite a number of crime writers have made a splash with their first book and never been able to repeat the success (Richard Hull and Kyril Bonfiglioli spring to mind, but the list is quite a long one.) However, my bet is that Tyler’s talent is such that he is no one-hit wonder, and I look forward to reading A Very Persistent Illusion.

Malla Nunn, author of A Beautiful Place to Die (Picador) has garnered praise for her first book from the estimable Minette Walters (‘A terrific page-turning debut’) I tend to discount blurbs written by authors who share a publisher as the blurbed writer, but I must say that this book does look very interesting indeed. The story is set in 1950s South Africa, when ‘the colour of a killer’s skin matters more than justice’ and a glance at the opening pages suggests that DS Emmanuel Cooper is an interesting character, and Nunn a writer to watch.

Simone Van Der Vlugt is the author of The Reunion (tag-line ‘Never. Go. Back.) , published by Harper Collins. Simone is described as ‘Holland’s top-selling crime writer’ and the book is said to be reminiscent of Minette Walters and Nicci French. Again, I’m not sure how helpful such comparisons really are, but there must be a reason why publishers are so fond of them – perhaps many readers find them helpful, though I don’t, as I prefer to judge an author on his or her own merits. Again, this story sounds full of promise: ‘Sabine was fifteen when Isabel disappeared…Nine years later, unwanted memories are returning.’.