By Mischa Berlinski
Atlantic, £11.99
Mischa Berlinski's debut novel comes trailing rave reviews from the States.
The narrator, also called Mischa Berlinski, is a young Jewish-American journalist, who has followed his girlfriend to Thailand. She is working as a teacher; he is trying to make ends meet writing pieces for local newspapers.
One evening he has dinner with his friend, Josh O'Connor, who tells him about his extraordinary encounter with a strange woman, Martiya van der Leun, who is in prison for murder. Berlinski thinks there might be an article in her story. In no time, he is hooked and the rest of the book follows his search to understand what drove a brilliant young anthropologist to murder a Christian missionary in the remote hills of north Thailand.
