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A deadly assassin on a superyacht, the return of the Slow Horses team and Sally Rooney’s third novel in paperback

Short reviews of books by GW Shaw, Mick Herron, Liz Webb and Beautiful World, Where Are You

Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You is now out in paperback

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You is now out in paperback

Dead Rich by GW Shaw

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

Bad Actors by Mick Herron

The Daughter by Liz Webb

Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You is now out in paperback

Myles McWeeney and John Meagher

June 11 2022 02:30 AM

Thriller: Dead Rich by GW Shaw Riverrun, 400 pages, hardcover €18.75; e-book £7.99

Dead Rich by GW Shaw

Kai, a carefree former pop star, accepts his new girlfriend Zina’s invitation to join her parents on a spur-of-the- moment Caribbean holiday. What he hadn’t realised is that Zina is the daughter of Russian oligarch Stepan Pirumov and that the holiday is on his super yacht, the Zinaida, moored in the US Virgin Islands.

The Zinaida is packed with all the toys an oligarch could wish for, including a family-sized panic room where people can shelter safely for up to three days in the event of piracy. The yacht’s permanent crew are Swedish captain Marius Falk and first mate Erin Wade, a thirtysomething born mariner who would prefer to be sailing solo around the world.

The rest of the crew have been hurriedly assembled and include two chefs and chief stewardess Marissa from Miami. Kai gets a somewhat frosty reception from Zina’s mother Yulia, already on board, but a warmer welcome from her rather harried-looking father when he arrives from Paris later that day.

When the Zinaida casts off and heads for St Croix, it is clear that all is not well and that there is a deadly assassin on board, and a tense maritime game of cat-and-mouse ensues within the confines of the yacht as Kai and the resourceful Erin team up to save themselves and the Russian family. GW Shaw delivers a superbly crafted, adrenalin-charged thriller that engages the reader fully from start to finish.
Myles McWeeney

Fiction: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Faber & Faber, 352 pages, paperback €12.99; e-book £5.59

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

With an adaptation of her first book, Conversations with Friends, on TV screens right now, and the dramatisation of her second, Normal People, still fresh in he memory, there’s no getting away from the defining young Irish writer of her generation.

This third book, newly released in paperback, centres on friends Alice, a Rooneyesque writer, and Eileen, a frustrated employee at a literary magazine. Alice relocates to the west of Ireland and falls for Felix, a warehouse worker, while Eileen gets entangled with Simon, a childhood friend. Rooney has become a master of Hiberno-English dialogue, but the chapters in which Alice and Eileen correspond via wordy, worthy emails certainly divide opinion.
John Meagher

Thriller: Bad Actors by Mick Herron
Baskerville, 352 pages, hardcover €26.59; e-book £9.99

Bad Actors by Mick Herron

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With Slow Horses, Apple TV+’s series of Herron’s first Slough House thriller proving such a success, a new novel featuring the unruly collection of demoted and embittered spies led by the odious Jackson Lamb is very timely.

When a key member of a Downing Street think-tank disappears, MI5’s chief, the devious Diana Taverner, becomes the chief suspect. Claude Whelan is sent to establish the truth, but when Slough House and its denizens become involved, more than a little chaos is added to a dangerously unstable situation.

Plenty of razor-sharp, acid-tipped dialogue and a generous helping of thrills along the way as the slow horses muddy the waters.
Myles McWeeney

Thriller: The Daughter by Liz Webb
Allison & Busby, 320 pages, hardcover €23.79; e-book £7.59

The Daughter by Liz Webb

At 37, permanent misfit Hannah Davidson’s life is spinning out of control. She’s drinking too much and she’s out of a job. What’s more, she has got a dementia-stricken elderly father, an estranged TV star brother, and a mother whose mysterious murder more than 20 year ago has left a shed-load of unanswered questions.

For most of her adult life, Hannah has been an overweight outsider, but a dramatic diet and a box of hair dye has turned her into the spitting image of her fey photographer mother Jen Davidson, a resemblance that brings deadly consequences as she seeks to find out who killed her mother.

An utterly delightful, clever and often laugh-out-loud debut.
Myles McWeeney

More On Sally Rooney

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A deadly assassin on a superyacht, the return of the Slow Horses team and Sally Rooney’s third novel in paperback

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