This is a bad book.

No, strike that. This is a terrible book.

And to think, this Gadney chap (scripted - yawn! - Minette Walters for TV, apparently) must've been so chuffed with himself too: spook shenanigans between here and Greece to - gasp! - steal back the Elgin Marbles. Hats in the air, Mr Gadney! Bunting and lemonade.

Alan Rosslyn was there on minor surveillance when he fell for the client, Cleo Ipsilantis. Then suddenly it was no more carry on Cleo and him smuggled back by MI-something just in time to discover her involvement in dastardly archaeological pilfery. Will they get away with it? Is Cleo really dead?

Well, no, of course not. It's that kind of book - scarcely an original word between its covers and what there are trowelled on with a pedantry that defies comedy:

"She's a woman with a secret past and present, and there are parts of them she doesn't want exposed. Chapters in her past and present that neither she nor the DG want bringing into the open. And they are very personal. There you have it."

Honestly, you couldn't make it up. The full English, extra lard. Bad words, bent out of shape and hammered through the wrong shaped holes. And to think, there was a time when Faber & Faber on the jacket stood for something. Between them, Gadney and the equally woeful Michael Dibdin seem hell-bent on murdering the once venerable old house. Silly and quite intolerably dull, the Greeks ain't the only ones who seem to have lost their marbles.