As a reader, I've gone through many phases in my time. Way back, there was a science fiction binge, the authors' names - L. Sprague du Camp, Clifford D. Simak, and dear old L. Ron Hubbard - as exotic as the subject matter with which they dealt. Then I moved on to crime novels, and who better to start with than Dame Agatha Christie, the original queen of the classic detective story. As there were sixty-six full-length novels, plus innumerable stories, it took me quite a while to do the lady full justice, but eventually I had read enough that I could sit back and luxuriate in the thought that enough was enough.
That was a few years ago, so imagine my surprise, then, when there arrived on my desk While the Light Lasts and Other Stories (HarperCollins, £14.99 in UK), a brand new anthology of unpublished stories by Dame Agatha, with background notes by Tony Medawar. It was like the Second Coming.
There are nine pieces in the collection, two of them featuring the man with the superabundance of little grey cells, Hercule Poirot. All exhibit the Christie stamp of being intricate little puzzles, with the obligatory sting in the tale. "The Actress" is about a woman who turns the tables on a blackmailer, "The Edge" deals with jealousy and infidelity, while in the title story, a Rhodesian tobacco plantation is the setting for an unexpected visitation from beyond the grave. A curiosity piece, maybe, but delicious just the same.
Natasha Cooper writes books with titles such as Fester- ing Lilies, Bloody Roses and Rotten Apples, so it's no surprise to find that her latest is entitled Sour Grapes (Simon & Schuster, £15.99 in UK). As usual it features crime novelist Willow King, who is married to Superintendent Tom Worth, has a two-year-old daughter, Lucinda, and is helped and hindered in her amateur sleuthing by her young friend, Emma Gnatche.
In this one our heroine has temporarily given up sticking her nose into criminal cases in order to concentrate on her latest fictional effort. But of course, when Emma comes along with a challenging mystery, Willow cannot help getting involved. The plot hinges on the science of lie-detection, upon which Emma is writing a thesis. In the course of her studies she comes upon one Andrew Lutterworth, who is in prison for a fatal hit-and-run that he claims he had nothing to do with. When Lutter worth's polygraph test turns out positive, Emma, enlisting Willow's help, sets out to prove his innocence, but in the course of her investigations she lets loose a whole new can of worms. Author Cooper writes and plots well, and in her two sleuths has drawn a sympathetic and engaging pair of characters. Nice one, Natasha.
John Francome, I suppose, is the natural successor to Dick Francis, when the time comes for the maestro to hang up his spurs. In his latest offering, High Flyer (Headline, £16.99 in UK), he tells the tale of Joey Leatham, an orphan who has made good as a jockey and is loved by the exotic Nina Korsakov. One of the most soughtafter riders in Europe, Joey has barely had time to enjoy his success when he becomes the victim of a blackmailer. What to do? Well, what he does do I'll leave you to find out for yourself. So put on your racing silks, place your feet in the stirrups and prepare yourself for such earth-shaking prose as "The curls of her pudenda gleamed in the lamplight" while "Her breasts, like a pair of harvest moons, shone down on him..." Would dear Dick be so explicit? Never.
Laurie R. King's A Mon- strous Regiment of Women HarperCollins, £15.99 in UK) is set just after the first World War, and her gimmick is that her female detective, Mary Russell, is an apprentice to the great but ageing Sherlock Holmes. I have to admit that I'm partial to this kind of pastiche, especially when it is handled as well as it is here. Russell is investigating the New Temple of God, ostensibly a charismatic sect involved in the postwar suffrage movement. However, when the rich patrons of the cult begin dying violently, Russell smells a rat, and a female one at that. Great fun, this, written in a high camp style that delights all the more for taking itself seriously. Can't imagine what aficionados of the original Holmes books will think of it, though.
In The Butcher of Glaston- bury (Gollancz, £15.99 in UK), David Bowker combines murder and the supernatural to chilling effect. His limpid, almost lyrical prose details the story of 13-year-old Tess Martin and the horrifying discovery she makes one starlit night upon returning to her home under the dark mass of Glastonbury Tor - "the hill like a Calvary thorn .. . [merging] with the blue-black sky". Someone, or something, has slaughtered her whole family, Chief Super Vernon Laverne is called in, more butcherings occur, dark whisperings are heard, mysterious lights shine in the heavens, and occult forces interfere before a solution is found. A strange mixture, but oddly mesmerising.
Germanicus, by David Wish art (Sceptre, £16.99 in UK), is another historical thriller, this time set in ancient Rome - "Chandler meets Robert Graves", according to the blurb. The amateur sleuth here is Marcus Corvinus, a rich young noble and friend, for his sins, to Livia, the Emperor Tiberius's mother. Called in to investigate the death of Germanicus, Livia's grandson, Corvinus is reluctant at first but, when one possible solution asserts itself - that Tiberius himself had his own son murdered - our hero soon breaks into a gallop. The combination of ancient times and modern slang grates at first, but when that is overcome the innate humour and pace carry one though to the tragi-comic climax.
Finally, Chris Ryan's Zero Option (Century, £15.99 in UK), in which the SAS are the good guys and all who line up against them are the baddies. Clean-cut hero is Geordie Sharp, killer and family man, whose immediate foes are the IRA and a bunch of Libyan terrorists. Needless to say, he defeats them all, slaughters left, right and centre, and does it all in the name of might is right. Crackerjack stuff, this, slick, polished and gutwrenching.
Michael Painter is a free- lance journalist