The faceless one is called by Firth, an ex-police friend, about a man who lives in the flat up-stairs. Despite his advancing years, Jidney has a parade of middle-aged women suitors, each of whom lasts a few months before curiously vanishing. It does not take long to ascertain why - not when they discover a scrap-book of the missing women, a lurid painting, and a sickening snuff video. A14, the detective decides, has on its hands a serial killer of remarkable success.

Whether or not we need yet another serial killer novel can be debated until the cows come home, Dead Man Upright has to be taken for what it is; and what it is is severely disappointing.

Raymond's method is all too obvious - the last fifty or so pages are taken up with a dissection of the killer's methods and motivations, through discussions and letters. Unfortunately, this material only serves to play up to the image of the serial killer as erudite philosopher in place of the all too often banal truth; thus we have page upon page of rambling hackneyed cod-wisdom passing for insight. Occasionally it might throw up an intriguing question - "...there is no such thing as a socialist serial killer...every serial killer is a fascist" - but more often than not it then does little or nothing with it.

More serious though (and potentially fatal if these books are ever to work on screen) structurally Dead Man Upright is almost insultingly shabby. Despite a lack of evidence (and as one of his colleagues points out, there's enough crime out there already without going looking for more), the detective never once pauses to question Firth's snooping as little more than an ex-policeman finding it hard to pass up the job. Likewise, the discovery of the video is insultingly easy; the discovery of the location of the church crypt where Jidney does for his victims is simply beyond belief.

If Raymond means to probe the mind of the modern serial killer then he only partially successful; the three-quarters of the book he takes to get there are themselves criminal in their neglect of plotting and characterisation. At his best - and there are actually a few good examples in here - he achieves a grimy disgust at the sheer banality of too much crime (I Was Dora Suarez springs to mind). The problem is that all too often Raymond's deficiencies as a writer surface, leaving exposed the frequently lame structure of the novels. His genius is often to talk it better than he walks it, and while his recent Suarez spoken word LP is superb, Dead Man Upright is a lamentable mess.