Achingly beautiful novel reveals heartbreak behind Post Office scandal | Books | Entertainment

Mr Sidhu’s Post Office by Amman Brar, Hardback, £16.99

If you’re not feeling a little teary by the end of this heartbreakingly beautiful debut novel, you might want to check your pulse. Widowed Sikh postmaster Sukhdev ‘David’ Sidhu has run the sub-post office in Richmond, west London, faultlessly for two decades. But following the introduction of a new IT system called Horizon, the books won’t balance and more than £15,000 is missing. Mr Sidhu soon finds himself pitted against a system that refuses to listen with devastating consequences.

The computer, after all, is always right! Brar draws on the experiences of his sub-postmaster father to paint a warm, moving picture of a community plunged into crisis. Set against the backdrop of Mr Sidhu’s gradual falling in love with his colleague Rose, with flashbacks to his early life in the Punjab, it’s a charming, bittersweet tale with a huge heart. Simply first class! 9/10

Solitary Agents by David Goodman, Hardback, £20

Accidental secret agent Jamie Tulloch discovered a taste for espionage in Goodman’s multi-award-winning debut, A Reluctant Spy. Now the former disillusioned tech executive is back and facing his final hurdle to going full-time for MI6. Exercise Red Poacher pits the foreign intelligence service against its local rivals MI5 in a high-stakes training exercise to weed out the unworthy. But unbeknownst to Jamie, a foreign power has infiltrated the operation with murderous results and he’s in the crosshairs of British intelligence.

Now his MI5 opposite, burnt-out corporate lawyer Sam Li, must decide if Jamie really has gone rogue. The killing of a fellow trainee ups the ante, placing Jamie and Sam on a collision course that promises explosive results. The ever-inventive Goodman is one of our finest new spy writers and Solitary Agents is perfect for fans of Mick Herron, David McCloskey and Alex Gerlis. 8/10

The Shadow Step by Mark Billingham, Hardback, £22

Mark Billingham’s Ballroom-dancing detective Declan Miller returns for his third outing in the veteran crime writer’s palate-refreshing Blackpool-set series. From wobbly sausage dogs and accidental deaths to murder, kidnap and mayhem, Miller’s at the centre of it all, tangoing from crisis to crisis as the chaos escalates. When the body of a drug dealer is pulled from a park lake having apparently had his head bashed in, and a clearly innocent man confesses to having killed him, it sets in train a sequence of events that will have deadly consequences.

Cynical, dry and brilliantly humorous, Miller’s inability to resist making inappropriate jokes acts as a counterpoint to the darkness. Still talking to his dead wife, Alex, still trying to wind up partner Sara Xiu, and still trying to perfect his foxtrot, Miller is a brilliant creation and The Shadow Step is another Billingham corker. 9/10

Mr Moonlight by Philip Norman, Hardback, £30

Having discovered The Beatles, Brian Epstein steered them to global fame before becoming increasingly isolated and unwell as his young charges – the “boys” as he called them – became independent of him. Tragically, Epstein died aged just 32 of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills or, quite possibly, foul play (Reggie Kray hinted that he had been killed). Would they have been stars without him? Certainly The Beatles began to list badly following Epstein’s untimely demise in 1967 “(We’re f***ed,” said John Lennon when he heard the news).

Beatles biographer Norman is one of the world’s foremost Fab Four experts, having first tackled them in Shout! in 1981, and Mr Moonlight is a definitive take on one of the most consequential men of the 20th century – the quiet, Jewish businessman who changed the world. Poignant and revelatory, a must-read for Beatles fans. 8/10.