You know, this really isn't good enough. And at the risk of making it sound like a crusade, I blame Patricia Cornwall. The success of her fat, lame, reactionary 'thrillers' has erected a new road sign for wannabe authors chasing a quick buck. They hatch an ill-formed plot (usually a motley hodgepodge of what they've seen last on video), staff it with ciphers and spew it onto paper in a string of barely literate clichés. There is entirely too much of this rubbish out there, and it's frankly criminal that, a). they think they can get away with it; and, b). there are publishers accommodating (or mercenary) enough to act as willing accomplices. Whoever it was who coined that great phrase was on the money: this isn't writing, it's typing.

And to that end, H.E. (that's Heather - lest the name scare male readers, no doubt) Lewis' The Second Suspect is textbook - the writing is dismal, the pacing monotone and the depth of its characterisation (don't make me laugh) would shame the back of a postage stamp.

Plot? If you must. Gabriel and Ingrid Santerre are glamorous - "quiet rich" - abusers. She's onto the law at the start of the book because a young prostitute in their employ has died and she wants to shop hubby for this and past misdemeanours including the death of their own daughter. But he has money enough to buy his way to freedom, so can maverick Detective Caroline Reese eke out the truth in time? "We're all pawns in some game of his," she announces in an audacious example of Lewis' concrete-footed dialogue. "The whole damn bureaucracy's indulging his whims."

The bald truth (and this is fatal in a fiction writer) is that Lewis is just making this up. There's no suspension of disbelief, no emotional engagement, nothing that asks you in and invites you to stay. It goes hell for leather on plot and omits such niceties as would make for even constructive criticism. You wouldn't watch this if it was on Channel 5, so why on earth would you give it houseroom because it's between hardcovers? End to end - and all stations in between - The Second Suspect is almost supernaturally lousy.