From Ancient Rome to AI detectives, SAS heroes and humming birds | Books | Entertainment
Body of Lies by Jo Callaghan, Hardback, £18.99
Having created fiction’s first AI detective with her award-winning 2023 debut In The Blink of an Eye, Body Of Lies is the fourth and final of Jo Callaghan’s brilliant series of Midlands-set police procedurals pairing human detective Kat Frank with digital companion AIDE Lock. Yet with the astonishing speed of real-world technological change, what three years ago felt cutting edge now feels almost run of the mill. However, Callaghan’s writing, plotting and lovingly observed characters ensure her new novel is never anything less than a cracking and thought-provoking read.
When a newly-elected, AI-sceptical MP is horrifically murdered on Halloween, a message left on the body in binary code seems directly addressed to Kat: “Catch me if you can”. The gruesome killing precedes a massive cyber-attack against the UK that will stretch Kat and Lock to breaking point. Utterly gripping. 8/10.
SAS Great Escapes Five by Damien Lewis, Hardback, £22
As in its four previous volumes, the fifth book reveals untold stories of daring escapes and superhuman resolve by SAS soldiers fighting behind enemy lines in the Second World War. It tells five remarkable feats of endurance brought to life with the help of the heroes’ families and memoirs, including the unbreakable Sergeant Horace Stokes’ two years on the run, joining forces with local resistance fighters in Italy, including being captured by the Gestapo and tortured daily without revealing his true identity, and escaping from three POW camps to get home in May 1945. And Private Jack Sillito’s solo eight-day march across 180 miles of the Sahara without food or water after a failed SAS raid near Tobruk, surviving on sheer willpower and resourcefulness.
The true stories in SAS Great Escapes Five deserve to be told and remembered, and no one does that better than Lewis. 9/10
Inferno by Conn Iggulden, Hardback, £22
Having dipped out of his Nero books to begin a new series last year with Forged In Rome, Iggulden returns with the thrilling finale to his trilogy about the boy emperor. Nero is 22 and struggling to be the man he believes he can be and Rome deserves – but the cracks are already showing. Having ordered the death of his mother, Agrippina, his sleep is disturbed by nightmares and now, divorcing his popular wife Octavia against the advice of his closest aides, there are growing rumblings of discontent.
A rebellion in the far northern reaches of the Empire, led by Queen Boudicca of the Iceni in Britannia, and a great fire in Rome only weaken his position further as events spiral towards death and chaos. Iggulden is the undisputed heavyweight of the historical epic and even foreknowledge of events does little to reduce the drama. 9/10
How To Fly by Simon Barnes, Hardback, £22
One of our most gifted and beautiful writers about nature, Barnes has a unique talent for capturing its beauty and magic on the written page. How To Fly is another masterclass, examining how different species from birds, insects and mammals have tackled the fundamental problem of defying gravity – allowing them to soar free from earthbound shackles. From swifts, which sleep on the wing making soft circles high above our heads, to hummingbirds with their ability to hold dead still in the air and bees, whose wings beat a staggering 230 times a second, rarely has the natural world been so stunningly described.
How To Fly is also a moving contemplation on the mysteries and ideas of flight over a millennia of human thought. Enthusiastic and passionate, Barnes’ writing makes you want to throw on your wellies and jacket and head straight outdoors. 9/10
