Book reviewer ANNA CREER selects her best five reads for 2023.

“Act of Oblivion” by Robert Harris.

HARRIS’ best-selling novels have been inspired by historical events, most recently “Munich” (2017) and “V2” (2020).

In “Act of Oblivion”, he turns his attention to the English Civil War and its aftermath, telling the story of two of the regicides, Col. Edward Whalley, Cromwell’s cousin and confidant and his son-in-law Col. William Goffe, who fled to America.

Harris’ novel is based on the true story of their desperate attempts to evade discovery and capture. There are royal warrants for their arrest and a price on their heads. However, the American colonies are an ideal place to hide, as they are populated by Puritans, with little loyalty to the crown.

“Act of Oblivion” is an extraordinary story of stoicism and persistent self-belief, full of moral nuances, told by a master storyteller.

“The Hitchhiker” by Gerwin van der Werf.

VAN der Werf is a Dutch musicologist, teacher and journalist. “The Hitchhiker” is his fourth novel but the first to be translated into English.

Tiddo and his wife Isa have drifted apart and his son Jonathan is quiet and introverted, constantly drawing monsters and fantasy creatures in a sketchbook.

Tiddo has planned a driving holiday in Iceland because Isa has always wanted to go. He believes it will save his marriage and reunite his family. 

As they travel the tourist route, they notice lots of hitchhikers. Tiddo considers them a “bunch of freeloaders”. But Isa persuades him to pick up Svein Sigurdsson “handsome and enormous”, tattooed and charismatic. Svein charms both Isa and Jonathan. But is Svein all that he claims to be? As suspicions grow, the dream holiday becomes a life-threatening nightmare.

“The Lock-up” by John Banville.

SINCE 2007, using the pseudonym Benjamin Black, Booker Prize winner John Banville has written crime novels about an alcoholic pathologist, Quirke, set in 1950s Dublin.

However, in 2020 he decided to “kill off” Black and publish “Snow” under his own name, introducing a new detective, Insp St John Strafford, from the Protestant land-owning class. In “April in Spain” (2021) he brought Strafford and Quirke together.

The third in the series, “The Lock-up”, sees both detectives back in Dublin. Quirke’s wife has been murdered and he’s “faded … reduced in substance. He seemed not entirely there”.

Strafford is investigating the death of Rosa Jacobs, a Jewish student at Trinity College, found dead in her car in a lock-up garage. It would appear to be suicide, but Quirke proves the girl has been murdered.

The mystery of Rosa’s death eventually reveals the extraordinary complicity of the Irish Catholic church in providing a safe haven for Nazi criminals after the war.

“The Secret Hours” by Mick Herron.

Mick Herron’s latest, “The Secret Hours” has already been reviewed in “CityNews”. Herron’s incredibly popular and successful Slough House novels have brought him considerable fame and fortune.

Already two of his Slough House spy stories are Apple TV series, with a talented cast including Gary Oldman and Kirsten Scott Thomas. 

Although considered John Le Carre’s successor, Herron’s spies ironically are MI5 failures, the Slow Horses, condemned forever to repetitive task of “unfulfilment” and boredom in Slough House, “to look back in disappointment and stare round in dismay” as they live out the aftermath of their professional errors. Herron’s stories are both dark comedy and compellingly entertaining.

“The Fire and The Rose” by Robyn Cadwallader

IN her award-winning debut novel, “The Anchoress”, set in England in1255, local author Robyn Cadwallader, introduced Eleanor, a child from the village who asks the anchoress to teach her to read and write.

Eleanor returns in “The Fire and The Rose” working as a housemaid for a wool merchant in Lincoln. She dreams of working as a scribe, rejecting a proposal of marriage from an estate bailiff, telling him “I can write… I have skills I want to use”.

Sent to buy spices, Eleanor meets Asher a Jew who works for a spice merchant. Despite being wary of the Jews, in a city where prejudice is entrenched, Eleanor falls in love with Asher and they begin an illicit love affair forbidden by both the law and the church.

“The Fire and the Rose”, however, is more than a love story. It is a beautifully written, ambitious novel spanning 15 years that saw the persecution of the Jews by the English King intensify, culminating in 1290 with the expulsion of all Jews from England.