Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye at some of the best paperbacks currently on offer.
Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell (Time Warner, £6.99)
What was Patricia Cornwell thinking? Fans of this top crime writer will know her for her superb forensic scientist character Kay Scarpetta and the gruesome though compelling cases she solves. Cornwell has changed tack in two recent novels, developing new characters, police chief Judy Hammer and state trooper Andy Brazil, but anyone who has read the dismal offerings Hornet's Nest and Southern Cross will know that they are as lifeless and dull as any of Scarpetta's corpses. In her new book, she is once again attempting a comic novel and the result is even more dreadful than before. The story rambles on, it's dull and, for a comic novel, entirely unfunny. She loses any semblance of a plot half way through and it's a real challenge for the reader to keep going. If you've noticed Cornwell's name in the best seller lists (where it's a near-permanent fixture) and want to see what all the fuss is about, go for a book in the Scarpetta series and not this boring mess. - Bernice Harrison
Ladies of the Grand Tour by Brian Dolan (Flamingo, £8.99 sterling)
The latter part of the 18th century was the apogee of the age of the Grand Tour - most certainly a man's privilege. For most women, Europe was a fantasy, but for the Georgian ladies of England who could afford it (and a few who couldn't), Continental travel provided an escape from the droning world of polite drawing-room conversation. Many travelled for genuine intellectual enlightenment and female advancement, others for emotional refuge. (In this context Maria Edgeworth gets an occasional mention.) The author never hints that some might simply have gallivanted around Europe husbandless for personal pleasure and excitement. Perish the thought. He sees their travelling as a quiet revolution in female mores and manners as they seek to "reform themselves to reform the world". This entertaining if serious read is at its best when the author gives us the big picture. - Owen Dawson
Speer: the Final Verdict by Joachim Fest (Phoenix, £9.99 sterling)
Albert Speer began as "Hitler's architect" and ended by being virtually the organiser of Germany's war economy. He survived the Nuremberg Trials - luckily, according to the late Airey Neave - to serve a long sentence in Spandau, living out the rest of his life in relative privacy. The jury is still out on his case, so it is possible to regard him as simply a ruthless technocrat who worshipped efficiency as an end in itself, a Hitler idolator who gradually fell away as Germany came closer to the brink, or an ultra-ambitious man who always served his own career. Joachim Fest has written authoritative books on Hitler and other aspects of Nazism, and so is well qualified to probe into the mind of this enigmatic figure. - Brian Fallon
The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan by Ian Buruma (Phoenix, £7.99 sterling)
Many of the Germans who experienced the second World War could not forget it quickly enough come 1945. It was the next generation, which had itself committed no crimes, which insisted on remembering and which has contemplated and even, Buruma argues, nurtured a sense of national guilt. But if Germany has a culture of guilt, he argues, Japan is more afflicted by shame, a shame which comes not so much from a consciousness of crimes committed as from the fact of defeat and humiliation. Buruma is enlightening about Japan and pays just tribute to the moral seriousness of the younger German generation, though some may quarrel with his suggestion that it may have gone too far in its assumption of guilt or indeed with the implication of a term like "neurotic philosemitism". - Enda O'Doherty
Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel - The Rise of the Superstar DJs by Dave Haslam (4th Estate, £6.99 sterling)
Dave Haslam was the resident DJ at Manchester's legendary Hacienda club during its late-1980s heyday, and here he lovingly charts the history of the celebrity Disc Jockey, from Guy Stevens to Sasha, from The Emperor Rosko to Fatboy Slim. Haslam's first-hand experience of clubland is a bonus here, as is his refreshing lack of snobbery - he happily sits in on a Smiths/Morrissey disco in a dingy upstairs room, and he acknowledges the pivotal role of Sir Jimmy Saville in the annals of DJ culture. Haslam also effortlessly conjures up the atmosphere of a sweaty basement venue or a vast, pumping superclub, putting the reader right onto the dancefloor and into the DJ booth, and capturing the adrenalin and energy of clubbing past and present. His non-bogus journey finishes up - appropriately - with an eyewitness account of the last night at the Hac. - Kevin Courtney
The Future Homemakers of America by Laurie Graham, 4th Estate £6.99
In this evocatively titled book, the only thing the five young American women have in common is that they are all married to enlisted airmen and they are all marooned on a windswept army base in Norfolk. They venture outside the base and make friends with down-to-earth local woman Kath and for the next 40 years the lives of the six women criss-cross, mostly in airbases and small towns in America. They change husbands, get jobs and move their expectations and desires with the dramatically changing second half of the last century. Seen through their eyes, life in the 1950s for these shiny homemakers couldn't have been more different from their determinedly independent 1990s lives. Graham is superb at weaving together the women's stories. Her style is effortless, thoughtful and funny, and the pace never slips in this highly entertaining book. - Bernice Harrison
Red Dust: A Path through China by Ma Jian (Vintage, £7.99 sterling)
If you read only one book about China, make it this beautifully written account of a journey across the continent by artist and poet Ma Jian. A long-haired, free-thinking misfit in Beijing - his wife has left him, he rarely sees his daughter, his bosses are investigating him - and feeling trapped and depressed, Ma Jian sets off to find himself. Wandering, often penniless, from city to village, through desert and jungle, he meets others like himself, trying to find a new way to live. During his trip, though, China changes, as its rulers introduce economic reforms and a new openness - and individualism and materialism replace the values of family and community. It is a trip no westerner could have made and a fascinating book, of great perception, that no westerner could have written. - Sarah Marriott