Mr Nice, by Howard Marks (Minerva, £5.99 in UK)

"He was Britain's most wanted man. He has just spent seven years in America's toughest penitentiary

"He was Britain's most wanted man. He has just spent seven years in America's toughest penitentiary. You'll like him," promises the blurb on the cover of this autobiography of a "good" dope dealer. Well, it's possible to get too much of a good thing, and 466 pages of Mr Marks's life history is an awful lot to wade through without the aid of mind-bending substances, though some of the episodes are, it must be said, pretty mind-bending - running drugs to Ballinskelligs, for instance. The author's wry comments on a world which is rarely subject to articulate analysis are entertaining, though hardly - since he was, nice or not, a real-life drug dealer - as edifying as he imagines.

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace is a former Irish Times journalist