A Word in Your Ear: Gone For Good; Lucia in Wartime
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Your support makes all the difference.Harlan Coben's plot-spinning and characterisation skills reach a new peak in Gone For Good (Orion, c. 6 hrs, £12.99), a thriller which has more twists and turns than Hampton Court Maze. For 10 years, Will Klein has had to live with the thought that his older brother Ken raped and murdered his first girlfriend, and then disappeared without trace. But now, just as he's rebuilding his life, the past rears its ugly head again. His dying mother claims that Ken is not just still alive but innocent – and his new love, Sheila, disappears. Tim Machin reads with total involvement, excelling especially as the lisping and menacing Ghost, a classmate of Ken who knifed another schoolboy and is now obsessed with peculiarly unpleasant ways of killing people. Maybe not one to fall asleep to.
If you're a fan of E F Benson's bitchily observant novels of small-town life set in a thinly disguised Rye and starring the refined Lucia and pragmatic Elizabeth Mapp, you'll enjoy this sequel in homage to them by Tom Holt. In Lucia in Wartime (Isis, unabridged c. 6 hrs 35 mins, £15.99, mail order and catalogue 0800 731 5637), Mapp and Lucia battle for domination on frontlines of their own making: black-market rations, hospitality to officers, the Home Guard and the Red Cross. No prizes for guessing who wins. Norma West brings just the right period feel to the story. This one is perfect for bedtime.
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