A twist too far in tale of Olympian who is prime suspect in wife’s murder

Catherine Ryan Howard is, to quote the giddily enthusiastic blurbs on Burn After Reading , “queen of the unguessable twist”. That she is (or one of them at least), as well as being, definitively, a master craftsman of the thriller genre. The Cork woman’s books – including the playful, metatextual Run Time and the queasily menacing 56 Days , the latter currently being filmed for Amazon Prime – are full of brilliant storyline swerves and red herrings.

It’s the kind of Boss Level clever and inventive plotting that almost makes the reader pop up in their seat..