Then, of course, because the things you hate most have to go ahead and happen, they do. Forty, alcoholic, impotent, this indigent of letters no longer fears the morning mail: why should he, when his literary agent fired him by return post, when he has received a solicitor's letter from his own solicitor? Under spouse's orders to transmute Untitled into gold or agree to give up novels for life, Richard knows that at least things can't get any worse. Richard scrapes a living reviewing tedious minor biographies of second rate literary figures ( Robert Southey: Gentleman Poet The Souls's Dark Cottage: A Life Of Edmund Waller): duds on duds. His stats to date: two novels, published, unreadable, Unread one in progress, Untitled with several Unpublisheds and Unfinisheds lazing about, queering the pitch, and a harrowing sequence of fixtures in prospect: the Unwritten, the Unattempted and finally, the Unconceived. If novel writing is a competitive sport, (and for Amis, there's no if about it) then Richard Tull is lying perilously low on the leader board. So after all the pre-publication palaverthe teeth trauma, the advance angst, the marriage manque after all the rant and rancour, the reckoning: how well does Martin Amis's mid-life meditation upon mortality, literary value and the expanding universe measure up? Second only to Money in the comic masterpiece stakes, I would say, with minor reservations, and high hopes for the future. What follows is a selection of book reviews and essays on topics that range from men's magazines to the latest in crime fiction to the origins of his own plays. Declan Hughes' career as a crime novelist is rooted in longstanding passions: for the genre, for good writing in any genre, and for the absurdities of modern life.

Space Trap by Monica Hughes