(In the first book of ‘The Kills’, Parsons is looking for a suspected fraudster who may have stolen $53 million from one of those evil American companies doing work in Iraq. Scheming himself, he ends up in a bar in a yacht club in Malta, where there is a strange convention of female twins. Two of them begin to sing on stage, and “he thought that this was something of great beauty”.)

“The sentiment woke in him a longing. And where were his friends? A serious question: where was his room of people ready, rowdy, happy for him? Where were these people after all his years of labour, the constant moving, the broken associations, and the endless starts? Parson sang along, the table sang along, the women looking one to the other as if one common thought passed between them.”

Sutler, by Richard House