Borderliners, by Peter Hoeg (Harvill, £5.99 in UK)

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow has a lot to answer for. Though probably the only person on the planet not overwhelmed by that derivative, mechanical, meandering yarn, I was very interested in the scientific data. In fact, Hoeg's finest moments are when his cranky heroine debates the varying qualities of snow and ice. As for insignificant little matters such as characterisation, dialogue, plot, well, they are battered into submisssion. But for all its shortcomings, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow suddenly approaches extra terrestial levels of literary greatness when compared with Borderliners, arguably one of the worst books ever written. In this heavy-handed, monotone polemic delivered by a seriously disturbed narrator, the author rehearses every gripe he has ever had about the Danish education system in a novel so unsubtle and woodenly executed as to leave the reader searching for splinters.