A selection of paperbacks reviewed
The Byerley Turk Jeremy James Merlin Unwin, £7.99
Part history, part adventure, this is the story of the first foundation stallion of the thoroughbred line. Bred for war, he was foaled as fire raged during a storm in Serbia in 1678, and was called Azarax, Son of Fire. James makes effective use of sources in following the journey of the 17th-century stallion who was schooled to musket, pistol, sabre, lance, darts and arrows, before being walked to Istanbul. Recruited by the sultan's army, Azarax, at five, was a charger at the Siege of Vienna. Three years later, in 1686, after the sultan's defeat at the Siege of Buda, he was claimed as a spoil of war and brought to England. Capt Robert Byerley saw him in the king's stables, and both later served at the Battle of the Boyne, the Siege of Limerick and the Battle of Aughrim. Azarax was never wounded and died in his stable at Byerley's home, aged 25. - Eileen Battersby
The Devil's Disciple Glenn Meade Hodder, €10.99
Dublin writer Glenn Meade's latest novel is pacy, grisly and tense, which is what thriller readers always look for. FBI agent Kate Moran has the satisfaction of attending the execution of a serial killer, the Devil's Disciple, whom she had hunted down for five years. But when the killings start again - with all the Devil's Disciple's ritualistic hallmarks - Moran's certainties are thrown upside down and she has to resume the hunt. Most of the action is set in the US, in Virginia, but as the killer moves on to Paris and Istanbul, so too does Moran. Meade isn't breaking any new ground in terms of plot, character or style, but his writing is tight and convincing enough to create a real page-turner. - Bernice Harrison
Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer Alexander Maitland Harper Perennial, £10.99
Wilfred Thesiger was born in a mud-hut in the British legation's compound in Addis Ababa in 1910. These surroundings presaged his Spartan lifestyle during journeys through the remotest parts of Africa, Arabia and the Middle East. His father, Wilfred Gilbert, whose family had a long record of service to the crown, was the consul general there; his mother, Kathleen, was from Anglo-Irish stock, growing up at the family's estate in Co Carlow. It was these two figures and his happy early childhood in Africa that would determine the rest of his life. Once he had experienced the miseries of public school back in England, Thesiger's dream was to recreate the idyll of his earliest years. At every opportunity, he would saddle up his camel and trek across vast, unforgiving expanses of unexplored wilderness with, usually, only trusted native companions. Thesiger emerges from this authoritative biography as one of the last of the great overland explorers, compelled to see the world before modernity changed it forever. - Tim Fanning
Set Up Joke, Set Up Joke Rob Long Bloomsbury, £7.99
Switching between the conversations of writer/agent, writer/studio and writer/network and a litany of television-circle anecdotes, this is a well-written page-turner that catches, in gritty, humorous observation, the dirty poisoned triangle of studio, network and writer from which prime-time US television is often stillborn. Jokes vary from Long's recollections of actors who wait for writers to finish their scripts, while the actors wait, as waiters, on the writers in restaurants, remarking that if actors were better waiters, the writers would finish lunch quicker, get back to their scripts, and the actors wouldn't have to wait so long; to the contradictory rules that govern hiring, firing, rewrites, pilots and market research testing. The title refers to a conversation Long (who won two Grammys for Cheers) had with a friend about the mechanics of writing television humour: "It's all just set up joke . . ." - Paul O'Doherty
The Contemporary Caribbean Olwyn M Blouet Reaktion Books, £14.95
The Caribbean is blessed with a beautiful climate and contains some of the most fabulous places on earth. It is also a fascinating region in other ways: historical, cultural, botanical, musical, and economical. Blouet's book takes us behind the cliches of tourism and into the real world of the Caribbean's inhabitants past and present. Though it is a good rough guide to the islands and has interesting and useful updates in a broad range of categories, proper editing would have greatly improved it. Blouet is good on the dynamics in the region: the increasing collaboration among the countries of the Caribbean, between these and South America, and on the recent strong Chinese interest. This would be a particularly useful companion for anyone travelling to the cricket World Cup. - John Moran
The Coast of Akron Adrienne Miller Arrow, £7.99
Akron, Ohio, like Shakespeare's Bohemia, doesn't actually have a coast. Nor does Adrienne Miller allow her characters to coast through it. In this camp parody of the modern art scene, Miller sets out to reunite a dysfunctional family. There is Lowell Haven, a famous artist who only ever paints self-portraits; his lover, Fergus, who lives with him in a 65-room mock-Tudor mansion; Jenny, Lowell's ex-wife; and her daughter, Merit. Miller's polymorphous prose alternates between first- and third-person narrative, journal entries and dreamed-up magazine articles. Miller is adept at exuberant prose pyrotechnics, her journalistic background gives bite to the satire, and she has a sharp, streetwise wit. But at more than 500 pages she gives us too much, a common first-timer's error. The climactic masque party is signalled from the start, making proceedings tendentious. Miller also decides to divulge the secret of Lowell's painting career far in advance of her denouement, rendering it unsatisfactory in the extreme. Alan O'Riordan