THE COWS COME HOME by Paul Chambers (UPSO, £9.99, also available from Waterstones and Amazon. Contact UPSO, 5 Stirling Road, Castleham Business Park, St Leonard's-on-Sea, East Sussex TN38 9NW):

THIS tale is of a Gateshead-born lad on his wayward and often humorous journey through life in the mid-20th century. There are many ups and downs and even moments of great sorrow in the journey which takes our hero to India and back, but he shows the typical Geordie unquenchable spirit and natural humour in even the darkest moments. A book guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

THE RIGHT MADNESS by James Crumley (Harper Collins, £18.99)

THERE'S drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll and then there's American crime ace James Crumley, who adds buckets full of blood and corpses to the sky to the already volatile mixture. Montana Private Eye CW Sughrue has already had a bellyful of lead on a previous case but he is all ready to put his life on the line again for a mere $20,000 to help a high-powered psychiatrist track down a patient who has stolen confidential information. It all sounds innocuous enough but Sughrue has soon fallen foul of the law as well as assorted baddies, and the bodies begin to pile up, but there are plenty of steamy scenes to offer some relief from the violence. Sughrue is not a loveable character - he does not like himself that much and his girlfriends are not that keen - but life is never dull when he's around.

LAST RITES by Barbara Nadel (Headline, £18.99)

NADEL deserts modern Istanbul for the London of the 1940's Blitz but she still delivers the goods with a murder story rich in wartime atmosphere, full of authentic police detail and with a plot that expands beyond the normal criminal barriers. Undertaker Francis Hancock deals with bodies every day of the week, but gets a nasty shock with one client - he had met the man two days earlier staggering around a churchyard and claiming a woman had stabbed him. This 'unnatural' death disturbs Hancock so much that he determines to get at the truth - a truth which is hidden beneath further mystery and surrounded by danger. Nadel is always disturbing but never fails to draw you into her net.

LATE VICTORIAN GOTHIC TALES edited by Roger Luckhurst (Oxford University Press, £8.99)

ANCIENT castles, dungeons and graveyards are the familiar background in this anthology of classic horror in which the dead walk, curses take a terrible toll and murders are ever so foul. Some tales are a bit creaky now but when they hit the spot, as with Conan Doyle's Egyptian-haunted lot 253, they can still make your flesh creep.

Steve Craggs

Published: 21/06/2005