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Kento, a researcher in a pharmaceuticals laboratory, discovers that his scientist father was working on a secret project on mutant cell research and virology. The work and the specialised computer programme that his father left behind on a laptop is however, far beyond his understanding, but from speaking to colleagues in research and from the amount of interest his father's papers are gathering from other agencies and the authorities, Kento knows that it's dangerous material and might even have been the cause of his father's death.   At the same time, Yeager a military contractor, has been assigned to a four-man team on a mission to the Congo, where it has been reported that a new life-form has come into existence that could lead to the extinction of all mankind. Yeager's son is suffering from a rare disease, which undoubtedly is connected to Kento's father's research and the new life-form. It's a good premise and the author ties it in well into the current

It seems to me that the biggest challenge of any fantasy writer is to find an innovative way to make its inevitable warring kingdoms storyline interesting, without straying too far away from the familiar aspects that define the genre in the first place. I don't think Alex Marshall comes up with anything new in A Crown for Cold Silver , certainly not with a rather bland generic title like that (even though it takes place on the 'Star', I don't think Star Wars is an option either), but there's strong characterisation here, a richly developed world that has potential for further expansion and plenty of meaningful incidental detail. Whether this is further developed remains to be seen, but the best thing about A Crown For Cold Silver is that even coming in at 650 pages, there's never a dull moment. As conventional as it might sound, the best part of the book is the lead-up to the Big Battle. The battle could by no means be described as anti-climatic (the Star will

Charlie Parker comes across all kinds of horrors in his work as a Private Detective, particularly for one who is sensitive to or who tends to attract things of a somewhat supernatural character. The horror that comes up in A Song of Shadows however is one that is rather disturbingly entirely man-made - or, depending on your view of evil, perhaps not - extending to those involved in the running of the Nazi death camps during WWII and their victims. Parker got a bit too close to the after-life in his last case, and at the start of A Song of Shadows he's in recovery in the small coastal town of Boreas in Maine. Lucky to be alive at all, he's making his first tentative, painful steps to recovery, but - needless to say - it's not too long before trouble turns up on his doorstep, and of course it's never anything minor either. A dead body washed up on the beach, a burnt house with a family murdered and their son missing, a young neighbouring girl who has unsettling dreams.

Last Night on Earth has much of the material that made The Fields a delightful, entertaining and a thoughtful read. It's very much rooted in the Irish immigrant in London experience and uses the cultural juxtaposition to examine with the difficulties and the strange twists of fate that life throws at you. Yes, it deals with depression, breakdown, opens with a spectacularly sweary and sweaty mess of a birth scene that leaves Jay and Shauna with a brain-damaged child Bonnie, but you might as well get used to Maher's writing being right in your face from the start, because it doesn't let up. More importantly, even though it builds up to an epic end-of-the-world situation, it doesn't let you down in the end either. Don't be fooled by the fresh-off-the-boat Irish humour. Jay's unconventional perspective, language and manner is revealing of a ferociously intelligent, warmly open and deeply loving outlook on the world. Even within the cynical world of London and the

104 years old Aganetha Smart is abducted/borrowed from an old-people's home by a young man and woman who appear to have an interest in making a documentary about her. In her youth Aganetha was a champion runner in Canada in a time when it was rare for women to be involved in the sport, going on to participate in the 1928 Olympic games.   I didn't however quite get quite that far on with the book. The chapters cover several periods, alternating timelines between the 104 year old in the present day, her early family experiences on the farm at the beginning of the 20th century - involving deaths of brothers and sisters, and her training and beginnings as a medium-distance runner. There was nothing here in period, character or sporting terms to hold interest. Unfinished.