Arcadia, 416pp, £18.99
Contemporary moral debate underpins this clever, provocative novel that asks whether art can be separate from the artist. In the 1980s, Clarissa Phipps, unable to join the priesthood, interviews Seward Wemlock, a church artist, for the BBC. Fast forward thirty years and she's now rector of that same Church where she discovers the chief bellringer, her best friend's husband, is molesting a 15-year-old boy. She does the ‘right’ thing, but reflects on the rumours she ignored years ago that Wemlock was an abuser of his teenage models.
Choice crime
