Undone, by Michael Kimball (Headline, £5.99 in UK)

If you were plotting an insurance scam which involved being buried alive, and you were waiting patiently, quaffing a couple of…

If you were plotting an insurance scam which involved being buried alive, and you were waiting patiently, quaffing a couple of tanks of oxygen, all the while, for your wife to dig you up, the last thing you'd want to be told is that said spouse had absconded with the undertaker. Which, allowing for a couple of million twists, is pretty much what happens to Kimball's hero Bobby Swift. Still, being buried alive has its advantages - at least it saves him from the living horror of associating with the unpalatable selection of characters who people this nasty, slickly executed thriller.

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace is a former Irish Times journalist