PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This is promised as the first in a new series featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, and I hope there will be more to come! It is 1947 Cambridge, and a distinguished German philosopher and supposed ex-Nazi, Martin Friedrich, is a victim of a hit and run accident. Or was it? Minter (who made an appearance in the last book of Carroll's Eliot Quartet – not that the reader needs to have read it to follow this) is a careful and weary detective in an England that is yet to recover from the ravages of the recent war. As he unravels the circumstances behind Friedrich's death, his own past surfaces – and that of other people who would rather that the secrets of the past stay there… Carroll's literary style can be quite formal at times, but in this book is less so. It's still assured and careful writing, but this fits the philosophical undertones without interfering in the story, the characterisation or the unfolding solution. Lindy
Steven Carroll is the multi-award winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the SE Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2016. A New England Affair (2017) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2018 and The Year of the Beast (2019) was longlisted for the 2020 Voss Literary Prize. His most recent novel, Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight was longlisted for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize and for the 2023 Voss Literary Prize. Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This is promised as the first in a new series featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, and I hope there will be more to come! It is 1947 Cambridge, and a distinguished German philosopher and supposed ex-Nazi, Martin Friedrich, is a victim of a hit and run accident. Or was it? Minter (who made an appearance in the last book of Carroll's Eliot Quartet – not that the reader needs to have read it to follow this) is a careful and weary detective in an England that is yet to recover from the ravages of the recent war. As he unravels the circumstances behind Friedrich's death, his own past surfaces – and that of other people who would rather that the secrets of the past stay there… Carroll's literary style can be quite formal at times, but in this book is less so. It's still assured and careful writing, but this fits the philosophical undertones without interfering in the story, the characterisation or the unfolding solution. Lindy
