The world turns, and as surely as day follows night a second X-Files novel finds its way blinking to the over-crowded shelves. The X-Files is about as hot as it can be right now without it goes prime time and jettisons everything that makes it so endearing. There is a glossy Manga comic (and, to be brutal, a more ugly birth it would be hard to imagine: early US issues go for silly money) and the first series is going great guns on video. A second has already rocked America, with a third, (and even a movie) being whispered-up. The unknown Gillian Anderson and frankly furniture-like David Duchovny are suddenly, inexplicably, genuine stars.

And the difference in the first and second series is rather astonishing. The nervous, stuttering infant has given way to a blustering, self-confident teenager. The atmospheres are darker (this is a series where medium is at least as important as message), the stories stranger, the comedy broader, the movie rip-offs more confident: Dod Kalm barely hangs together, but drips with extraordinary foreboding; the two-parter Colony/End Game is a detailed, thrilling mini-movie in its own right; the brilliant bad taste freakshow comedy Humbug is an endless joy.

And so a second novel.

Whirlwind is better than the comic. It's better than its stillborn twin, Goblins. But enough of the praise. In it, Mulder and Scully travel to the desert outside Phoenix to investigate a string of corpses related only by having their clothing and flesh scoured off. There is a motley collection of suspects, of course -- the recently released killer, the Indian who deals in artefacts from the sinister local reservation, the indigenous FBI who seem to be covering up details of the crimes. What's happening? Why are the bodies so mutilated? Why does it take 224 pages for anyone to read the title?

The problem with Grant's book is that there is no tension. It's not entirely his fault, but calling the damn thing Whirlwind does sort of give the game away. Added to which, this is po-faced stuff. It has none of the inventive spark of its TV sibling, none of its mischievousness. We take it as seriously as it takes itself or not at all. And all this in the usual prosaic Prozac prose of the TV tie-in. Why hire a real novelist like Grant to cuff his hands behind his back? If the novel series was to be half as daring as its original inspiration they'd be hiring K.W. Jeter, Dennis Etchison, hell, even Ramsey Campbell.

At least this time around the narrative isn't saddled with our heroes baby-sitting junior Feebes and a terrible grinding subplot, but gains little from its new found freedom. Given space to play with, why are these books not being allowed to develop along darker, more sinister lines, like that great second series two-parter, or the first's magnificent closer? The suspicion is that the creative heads don't want to surrender anything significant to the inferior spin-offs and as such they are being left to fend for themselves in the wild world of tie-in publishing. These books -- second-hand plot, duff characterisation and all -- are dashed off too easily. Chris Carter is selling his creation short if he thinks it's enough.