This is the great – slightly underrated – Irish writer’s 20th novel under his own name (he also writes crime, sometimes under a pseudonym) and in it, he draws together some of his best-known characters from different works. Freddie Montgomery, the maid-murderer of The Book of Evidence, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1989, takes the frontman role. Fresh out of his prison, he rocks up at his childhood pile to find it occupied by a different family. Somehow, he inveigles his way in, and he’s not the only interloper in the house. “This assembly of characters and agendas, padding around a draughty pile somewhere in rural Ireland’s recent past, would have all the makings of a whodunnit,” wrote Tom
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