Connolly takes enjoyable literary diversion with Stan Laurel story

Fiction: He, By John Connolly, Hodder & Stoughton, €16.99

While there’s a tradition of literary novelists succeeding at genre fiction, from Graham Greene to John Banville, thriller writers haven’t historically made the best literary novelists. John Connolly’s latest novel sees the Dubliner make a valiant claim for inclusion in the list of honourable exceptions, but then Connolly’s lean, precise writing has ever been the antithesis of flabby and formulaic.

With He, Connolly creates ...