REVIEWS
Taut detective noir with a twist
What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second,, hit the Booker longlist and was a rich, affecting piece of alternative history that traced the lives five children might have had, had they not been killed by a Nazi V2 rocket in 1944.
