Harriet Tyce draws on her experience of working as a barrister in this gripping but unsavoury debut psychological crime thriller.

Remotivated by the chance to lead her first murder case, Alison intends to have only one drink with work colleagues before returning home to Carl, convenient house-husband and part-time therapist since being made redundant, and six-year old daughter Matilda. It soon becomes clear that, not for the first time, Alison will get horribly drunk and have rough sex with handsome but unpredictable and manipulative lawyer Patrick with whom she has drifted into an adulterous “secret” affair. At first, it is hard to believe how such a dysfunctional, often cringe-making and weak-willed individual in her personal life could possibly be an effective and respective barrister. How has kept his patience with her for so long?

However, as the tale progresses, one begins to develop another perspective. Apart from the fact Alison is paying the bills, Carl often seems something of a control freak, unduly quick to criticise her efforts to be a good mother, even in front of Matilda, or denigrate her efforts at cooking – can it really be as bad as he implies? He seems over-protective of his daughter, keen to monopolise her affections. Is he really trying to undermine Alison’s relationship with her child, even demoralise her to the point of doubting her sanity?

The novel also touches on deeper themes concerning the problems for women seeking to succeed “in a man’s world”, or to hold down a complex job with irregular hours without neglecting their children. Has Alison become a “high-functioning” alcoholic, apparently on the brink of total collapse, because of the training which meant spending time in the pub after work getting on good terms with the senior colleague who could put vital work her way? If she were a drunken, adulterous man, would she “get away” with it more easily?

Reminiscent of “Appletree Yard”, I imagine this being made into a television mini-series. Yet although I understand the critical acclaim and popularity gained with the public, it would have been a better book for me if it had been more subtle, rather than laying on the drama with a trowel in ludicrously exaggerated dollops. When Alison picks her daughter up from school very late, an officious teacher, “a solid barrier of dun-coloured knitwear”, blocks her exit, demanding an instant fine of £20 cash which will increase to £30 if not paid until the next day. Tell me if I am wrong, but I cannot imagine any modern-day school imposing such a penalty. Also, is it likely that Alison would interview her client suspected of murder, not in her office but at a busy restaurant, where the waiter almost pours red wine over her confidential paperwork and the medium steak ordered proves so bloody that it seems the one thing that is apt, if ghoulishly?

Creative writing classes seem to plug the use of a dramatically violent or sinister prologue as a “hook”, but apart from making modern novels seem “formulaic”, in this case it amounts to a spoiler for readers with memories of a past scandal and would have been more effective if presented as one of the twists in the somewhat contrived conclusion. To be more than a smutty romp in the wake of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, this novel needed to have less emphasis on, I quote, “booze”, “shit”, “vomit” and sex, and more character development. It amounts to a simplistic theme in which essentially well-intentioned women rise above their flaws to win out over dominant but irredeemably vile men who deserve to pay with their lives. But what made them so bad, and are there no extenuating factors, as in real life? Also, it may well be that some barristers are drunken and unethical in real life, but this book seems to condone some very ambiguous moral values, quite casually suggesting that “wrong actions” are readily acceptable if taken for the “right” reasons.

To get the most impact from this book, I would advise readers to leave the potentially slightly distracting “Foreword” to the end. Advertised as a sequel to “The Disappearance of Adèle Bédeau”, also featuring Inspector Georges Gorski, this can be read as a stand-alone novel. Reading the two books “in order” may help to clarify Gorski’s personal situation, but I think “The Accident on the A35” has a better pace and more interesting characters and wry humour.

When local lawyer Bertrand Barthelme, an influential figure in the provincial French backwater of St. Louis in Alsace, is killed in a road accident one Tuesday night, foul play is not suspected. Unable to resist pleasing Bertrand’s pretty and surprisingly young widow Lucette, Gorski goes beyond standard procedure in an attempt to check on Bertrand’s final movements, discovering in the process that he has been lying to his wife for years for some unknown reason. Meanwhile, Bertrand’s seventeen-year-old son Raymond embarks on his own sleuthing exercise, intrigued by the discovery in his father’s desk of a scrap of paper bearing an address for the nearby centre of Mulhouse, in what looks like a woman’s flamboyant handwriting, quite out of keeping with his father’s stern image.

The detective story proves incidental to the essence of the book, which is the in-depth psychological study of the two main characters, Georges and Raymond, together with convincing little portraits of the supporting cast, bringing them alive as authentic characters with recognisable foibles. Added to this is the strong sense of place: the claustrophobic, inward-looking conservatism of a small town where mediocrity is expected and dullness is the comfortable norm. Yet this being set in , I think, the early 1970s, there is a flicker of dangerous revolt in the reference to Sartre, whom Raymond is absorbed in reading: a novel is “neither true nor false” but is must seem “real”.

Reminiscent of Simenon, the strong sense of being in France is heightened by the author’s skill in producing what purports to be a painstakingly precise translation of a French novel, clear, concise and vivid in style but also constrained, rather like the main characters themselves. Although very different in theme from the author’s prize-winning “His Bloody Project”, both the “Gorski” books continue the common factor of a sensitive, troubled adolescent boy denied affection and empathy by a harsh or uncommunicative male figure. Raymond cuts (sometimes literally) an often amusing but poignant figure, secretive and observant, easily embarrassed, desperately worried about what people think of him, unable to prevent himself from antagonising those whom he likes or loves, with occasional bursts of short-lived euphoria when, no longer controlled by his father, he manages to kick over the traces with some “real”, however bizarre, action in a dull “unreal” world.

Gorski seems similarly emotionally stunted, the son of a deceased pawnbroker who “plays the part” of a detective, potentially very successful with his perceptive, persistent approach, but oddly passive in his personal life, and like Raymond, finding it hard to engage with others, estranged from his wife, and frequently the butt of mockery, dismissed as a plodder.

I found this book a page turner, ramping up a high degree of tension towards what seemed likely to be a fateful but unpredictable end. Both very abrupt, and leaving a great deal to my imagination, the ending disappointed me initially, despite some ingenious twists. On reflection, I decided it is actually quite subtle and effective.

I was also irritated at first by the repeat of the quirky device used in “The Disappearance of Adèle Bédeau”, namely the claim that both books are the work of the author Raymond Brunet – not a spoiler since we are told this in the Prologue. There is speculation as to the extent to which “The Accident on the A35” is autobiographical, accounting for Brunet’s own trouble personality. Since the two novels would stand quite well without this extra twist, I am not sure it is beneficial, particularly since it serves to distance the reader somewhat from the drama.

Having said this, Graeme Macrae Burnet manages to engage us with the characters by the sheer quality of his writing, saved from bleakness by moments of humour, and the promise that there may be a third book in the trilogy – another manuscript also having come to light in 2014.

The opening chapters give a somewhat romanticised view of life in the ancient village of Ein Hod, said to be granted to Palestinian ancestors by Saladin, with flute playing in the olive groves after a day’s harvesting, yet perhaps this serves to heighten the brutal shock of “El Nakba”, the catastrophic expulsion of the Arabs from the land they had occupied for centuries, by soldiers in support of Israeli settlers.

Based on both respected written sources and her own experience of the refugee camp in which she was born, and of taking the chance as a teenager to study in the US, ending up living with her daughter in Pennsylvania, author Susan Abulwhawa has written a searing tale of Amal, a spirited Palestinian girl whose family members suffer terribly in various ways as they are forced out of Ein Hod to a UN-financed adobe box in the camp at Jenin. An infant brother is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier to comfort his young wife who has been left infertile after ill-treatment at the hands of the Nazis – in such ways the author shows sympathy with the sufferings of the Jews and an understanding of how it has so tragically fed their own determination to create a state of their own, whatever the cost.

Amal’s mother, a once lively Bedouin girl, is traumatised by events, only able to deal with her emotions by internalising them, thus seeming cold and distant to her daughter, who in turn treats her own child in the same way, through a fear of loving what one is doomed to lose. Amal’s cultivated, innately gentle father is radicalised to take up arms in the attempt to regain his property and freedom. Her brother Youssef is consumed by the desire for revenge, and so on.

Although leavened with humour and the strong sense of community, the bleakness of real events, and the unrelenting destruction of innocent families, seem at times too much to take, but anger and outrage kept me reading, together with the sense that to give up implies a lack of respect for those suffering a grave injustice which is still ongoing.

Another aspect is the style of writing, about which I have mixed feelings. I appreciate that there has been an attempt to emulate the flowery, convoluted style of Arab writing, but for a British reader it can become exhausting in its overblown repetition. Since I assume English is the author’s second language, I am not sure to what extent the often unusual use of words is deliberate. Certainly, at times it creates a vivid, poetic quality to convey fear, violence, internal reflections on one’s state. I particularly liked the sensitive translations of Arab poetry. By contrast, the author’s style is frequently jarring, and in moments of intimacy may appear cloying and cringe-making.

The most authentic and engaging sections of the novel are those set in Palestine. In the safety and opportunity of the United States, Amal succeeds in her studies and work, but always seems like a transient observer, detached from her surroundings and characters who seem somewhat two-dimensional. There are some interesting if arguable insights, such as her sister-in-law’s belief that Americans do not love like Palestinians because “they live in the safe, shallow parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell…the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of own own emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.” These sound like the author’s own personal reflections.

Bearing in mind that it seems even UN reports have counted some massacres of civilians as justifiable actions by Israel against militants, and in view of an apparent general lack of awareness of the details of the Palestine-Israeli problem, this unflinching and moving novel is an effective way of spreading the word about a major injustice.

To quote from Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet”:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself….
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

In this debut novel, Chris Hammer makes good use of both his first-hand knowledge of journalistic procedures, and his travels through the Murray-Darling Basin of Eastern Australia to research the impact of the 2008-9 drought.

Like Jane Harper’s “The Dry”, with which it is often compared, although with a distinctly different plot, this is another novel on the crimes triggered by the unrelenting heat and hardship caused by lack of predictable rain in rural Australia.

Traumatised by an ordeal suffered in Gaza, with questions over his ability to hold down his post, once successful foreign correspondent Martin Scarsden is given the supposedly straightforward task of covering how the run-down, drought-ridden town of Riversend is coping a year after its charismatic priest has inexplicably gunned down five local residents, before being shot dead himself by the local copper. Despite his grim motel room at “The Black Dog”, Martin finds himself reluctant to leave, caught up in the desire to find out exactly what motivated the priest Byron Swift to commit such an ungodly crime, but his quest is complicated by the apparent tendency of virtually all the local inhabitants to lie and have something to hide. Using the present tense throughout to heighten the tension, Chris Hammer keeps the suspense going by gradually revealing information, but keeps us guessing until the end as to the precise reason for the atrocity. Also, with the local population so divided against Swift, some of those with most reason to hate him being most surprisingly keen to describe him as a kind of saint, the priest’s true character remains an enigma almost to the end.

Initially slow-paced, but punctuated with dramatic events like the “hook” of the shooting outside the church in the prologue, the plot twists start to come so thick and fast that I began to feel bombarded. Martin’s frequent repeated summaries of events, either in his own mind or to update another character, prove very useful, making me wonder whether some editor advised this. If the book is made into a film, as I think is planned, some of this clarification may be lost.

Although the style at times seems formulaic and clichéd and some characters stereotyped, together with the, for female readers at least, common male fantasy of a romance with an impossibly beautiful much younger woman, the novel is saved partly by the vivid, closely observed descriptions of the landscape. “The sun slams down like a hammer on the anvil of the car park”; “where the river should be…there is a mosaic of cracked clay, baked and going to dust….There is nothing to hear; the heat has sucked the life from the world: no cicadas, no cockatoos, not even crows, just the bridge creaking and complaining as it expands and contracts in thrall to the sun”. Perhaps a surfeit of alliteration, but vivid and evocative writing. Crossing the barren stretch which separates Riversend from the greener civilisation of Bellington, with the temperature over 40 degrees, Martin hallucinates that his car is stationary, with world moving beneath him at the speed of 110 kilometres.

The author is also strong on the moral dilemmas and contradiction of being a journalist. Martin gets a buzz from being the first to submit a scoop, but his hubris over a run of good luck is shattered by the realisation that he has inadvertently published errors which may harm a third party, but cannot expect any support from bosses concerned only to save their own skins. Martin inhabits a “dog eat dog” world of wheedling, lying and moral blackmail to extract information, with the use of subterfuge to prevent others from getting hold of a story before there has been time to file it. He begins to see his past self in others, from the time when he was able to observe and therefore report brutal events so dispassionately, whereas post-Gaza he finds himself discarding details likely to cause pain to others, even though, at the risk of breaking a relationship, he can’t resist the drive to expose the truth as a whole – “It’s what I do”.

This succeeds well as a page-turning yarn but needs to be more concise, with the conclusion a little less neatly sewn up, shorn of corny romance, and devoting more care to the development of Bryon Swift’s puzzling character to be on a par with, say, a Graham Greene classic.

The sudden disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, the surly waitress at the real-life Restaurant de la Cloche in the “unremarkable” town of Saint-Louis on the French-Swiss border triggers the chain of events in what proves to be a psychological drama involving the two main protagonists in opposite camps, yet oddly similar in some ways.

Manfred Baumann, an outsider by reason of his Swiss father’s surname and his own awkward personality, manages a bank in the town. Bound by routine, obsessively tidy, unable to form social relationships despite living in Saint-Louis for years and doomed to rub people up the wrong way without meaning to do so, Manfred would also make a good detective in his close observation of his surroundings, his eye for detail and speculation on people’s behaviour – as often as not misconstruing their motives (perhaps not so useful for a sleuth!). What past events make him so secretive and prone to persist in a needless lie, which may in fact make him the subject of suspicion? Why are his emotions so repressed, and do they have a tendency to burst out in acts of violence?

The detective deployed to investigate Adèle’s disappearance is Gorski, a man of unusual persistence, who works on the basis of evidence, scorning the reliance on “hunches” of work colleagues, also haunted by his failure to solve the murder of a girl some twenty years earlier, for which a man he believes to be innocent was found guilty, later dying in prison. Found wanting by his snobbish middle-class wife, Gorski might have felt more at home if he had followed his father’s wishes and taken over the family pawn shop.

It would seem better known in France where it was apparently made into a film by Chabrol, Brunet’s novel has been brought to English readers in a superb translation (in that in never seems like one) by Graeme Macrae Burnet who made his name with the unusual murder story “His Bloody Project”, and could well have written this novel himself. I was fascinated by his “afterword” which reveals the intriguing similarities between the original author Raymond Brunet and his creation Manfred Baumann. An only child like him, attached to his mother but losing his father at an early age, Brunet too was “chronically shy”, never known to have a girlfriend nor to be gay, regarded as “aloof and superior” at work, and was a frequent patron of the Restaurant de la Cloche, until the discovery of his negative portrayal of the place together with its regular customers made it uncomfortable for him to go there. In fact, Brunet identified so closely with Baumann that he was devastated by Chabrol’s portrayal of him as “somewhat comic and pathetic”.

In short, an unexpectedly good read.

There are plenty of stories of naïve young women caught up in World War Two who prove plucky and shrewd when parachuted into occupied France to work in espionage or join the Resistance. This novel focuses on a more mundane form of spying, and at times almost seems like a parody of the genre.

Obliged by her widowed mother’s terminal illness and death to give up her school scholarship and prospect of trying for Oxford, Juliet Armstrong finds life taking an unexpected turn when she is recruited by MI5 in 1940, initially as a typist transcribing bugged conversations between Fifth Column Nazi sympathisers and “Gordon Toby”, the work colleague masquerading as a Gestapo agent.

Pehaps intentionally, the recorded conversations are monumentally boring and trivial – little threat to national security – but when Juliet is recruited to spy on one of the female members of an ultra-right wing club, matters take an unexpected sinister turn. As the plot switches continually between 1940 and 1950, when Juliet is working on childrens’ programmes at the BBC, the tale becomes less of a spy thriller, and more a case of paying the price for past actions.

At times the story is quite funny, even a page-turner creating the sense that the plot is going somewhere interesting and unpredictable. Therefore I tried to suppress my irritation (over the excessive use of asides in brackets!), together with a sense of unease over the underlying jokey, flippant attitude to war, which seems an aspect of Juliet’s personality. She is actually quite an unappealing character: instinctive lying without blinking, often for no apparent reason; getting a “buzz” from taking the occasional fool-hardy risk; proving ruthless and calculating under pressure; perhaps the ideal spy in her lack of emotion or commitment to anyone or anything. She is kind to dogs, or people who have suffered inadvertently through her actions, but does not seem deeply moved by anything.

This impression may be the unintended consequence of shortcomings in the writing. I agree with other reviewers who have found the characters wooden and underdeveloped, the few really dramatic incidents implausibly contrived, and the long-anticipated climax so disconnected from what has gone before that it seems as if pages have been left out in a printing error. It is presumably intended to be a clever and surprising twist, but it seems like lazy writing, even insulting, to foist it on the reader in this way.

Whereas most writers apologise for any factual mistakes in a novel, Kate Atkinson defiantly admits “I got a lot of it wrong on purpose” – permissible in the case of MI5’s refusal to “spill the beans” on the transcription process. The portrayal of BBC School Broadcasting in the early 1950s seems accurate as I recall, and it does not bother me if the rest is not. What I find harder to accept is an established writer taking the soft option of a plot with gaping holes.