cover image Curtain Call

Curtain Call

Graham Hurley. Severn, $28.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8861-7

Actress Enora Andressen, the 39-year-old narrator of this melodramatic series launch from Hurley (the Joe Faraday detective series), is surprised to return to her posh London apartment and find Malo, her “impossibly handsome, impossibly difficult, and impossibly remote” 17-year-old son, with whom she has a strained relationship. Malo has been living in Sweden with his film director father and father’s starlet girlfriend. Meanwhile, Enora has recently been diagnosed with brain cancer. Life gets even more complicated when investigative journalist Mitch Culligan asks Enora to approach Hayden Prentice, a shady multimillionaire with whom she had a one-night stand in her youth, in order to find out whether he’s donating large sums to a political party. The intrigue is largely subordinate to arguments about such subjects as Brexit, Trump’s America, Britain’s immigration policy, and political corruption in general. Readers looking for page-turning thrills will be disappointed. Still, Enora is a sufficiently strong character to carry a series. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (May)