S MAGAZINE ★ 18 AUGUST 2019 53
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“understandable
bafflement” of the
many people she
interviewed to get
a sense of what
day-to-day life is
like at the station.
I must say,
I share that
bafflement. As
Lisa’s ghost floats
around the station
commenting on
the comings and
goings of the staff
and passengers,
I wondered if
Doughty had taken
on a bet to write a novel about Peterborough
Railway Station and make it interesting. I’m not
sure she succeeded.
Fortunately, once the book is properly under
way and Lisa starts telling us about her life
rather than her afterlife, we spend less time
at the station and the book becomes
unputdownable and finally very moving.The Perfect Wife ***
by JP Delaney
(Quercus, £12.99)
The main narrator of JP Delaney’s third
psychological thriller – following the highly
successful The Girl Before and Believe Me- is Abbie, the wife of a tech genius and
entrepreneur called Tim. Well, no, that’s
not quite true. Abbie died in mysterious
circumstances some years earlier but Tim
has found a way to upload her memories into
one of the robots that his company makes –
“cobots” or cohabitation robots, which can be
designed to look just like lost loved ones. So
she looks, thinks and feels like Abbie.
Tim is a shifty character, however, and this
is as much a novel of domestic suspense
as a scientific thriller, as we learn what really
happened to the old Abbie.
It’s a bit of a hodgepodge. The book is very
touching when dealing with Abbie’s relationship
with her autistic son – the author has an
autistic child himself. But at other times, the
prose is uninspiring and the characterisations
a bit thin. So when the ethical issues around
making artificially intelligent robots are
rehearsed, you feel rather like you’re listening
to The Moral Maze instead of reading a story
about real people. But the twists are primed
and deployed with a master craftsman’s skill.
BOOKS
To buy these books, see Express Bookshop on page 77Special offer for S Magazine readers
The rest is histor y
The past comes to life in Kate Atherton’s
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The Bone Fire
by SD Sykes
(Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99)
It is 1361 and the Black Death
has returned to Kent. Lord
Oswald of Somershill flees with
his family to Eden Island and
its remote castle, surrounded
by marsh, where they will try
to wait it out. But the small
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by Philippa Gregory
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The Civil War has ended and
Charles I is imprisoned. But the
King’s troubles are worlds away
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scrapes a meagre living from
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arrival of a handsome stranger
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Alinor discovers his true identity
and the treacherous mission
that has brought him to
England. The novel’s power lies
in Gregory’s evocative portrayal
of the tidelands and the
everyday lives of those who are
bound to them.The Art Of Dying
by Ambrose Parry
(Canongate, £12.99)
Edinburgh leads the world in
medical science in 1850 but too
many people are dying suspicious
deaths. Raven, now a qualified
obstetrician, works alongside
his mentor Dr James Simpson,
whose career is threatened by
scandal. As Raven and his
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Simpson’s name, they discover
that a killer hides among the
medical community. This is a
gripping Victorian medical thriller.The Irish Princess
by Elizabeth Chadwick
(Sphere, £20)
Aoife, princess of Leinster, is
a pawn in her father’s brutal
schemes to extend his kingdom
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ambition of her own. When she
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torments England’s King Henry
II. The monarch also finds
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The 12th century is one of the
most thrilling, savage periods
in history and with The Irish
Princess, Chadwick has excelled
herself. This terrific novel is
packed with action, emotion,
politics and passion.
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In July 1983 James Morgan Kane returned home to find a corpse in
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