Gone are the days when John Updike, Norman Mailer and Toni Morrison dominated bestseller lists; now, fantasy and genre fiction rule. Here’s my recommendation for two genre novels that manage to be sly, wry and smart works of social commentary even as they entertain. Accordingly, Gus masterminds a scheme to steal “The Dancing Face,” a gold mask from Benin that’s packed away in a London exhibition space. The Dancing Face engages issues of reparations and identity while also holding its own with other classic crime novels about missing McGuffins. Like those novels, The Dancing Face offers an antic, absurdist take on the spectacle of flawed human beings attempting to set to rights a world gone wrong.