I just picked up a bunch of promising-sounding books in a charity shop.
Room by Emma Donoghue - A five year old called Jack narrates this novel. He has been living locked up in a single room with his mother for his entire life. A strange Him visits almost nightly, bringing them food and other basic supplies. Jack is happy but Ma is clearly not, and one day starts to plot their escape.
I found this unputdownable and compelling, but it was of course necessary to make the child more than plausibly precocious to make the novel readable in child-thought. Well worth a read.
Broken Silence by Danielle Ramsay - A typical whodunnit with a DI narrating. Utterly cliched, from the going through a divorce, drinking too much and barely hanging onto his job protagonist to an unbelievable level of corruption throughout his colleagues to his love interest being the psychologist on the case. Yawn. I figured out the murderer before I was halfway through the book which is extremely unusual for me.
Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt - A German novel translated into American English. A ghost narrates, helping a forensic pathologist solve murders. The main character, the ghost, was supposed to be some kind of loveable crook, a car thief in life. Whether it was the author or the translator I don't know but the colloquialisms were way OTT. It was trying far too hard to give the ghost a cool, street voice. Cringeworthy. The murder mystery wasn't very interesting either.
I'm now moving onto The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.