Burial

By Neil Cross (Simon and Schuster, £12.99)

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AVOIDING drunken, drug-fuelled threesomes in the woods tends to be a good idea. Especially with anyone who has told you that he cannot only hear the dead, but record them.

Nathan makes just that mistake in Neil Cross's stunning thriller, heading out with ghost-hunter Bob and the unfortunate Elise. Sure enough, as the title suggests, a burial soon follows, but it is Nathan who finds himself with a ton of dirt over his life.

Time is something of a healer, but — as one might expect with Bob around — the past comes back to haunt Nathan and, some 11 years after that fateful trip down Lover's Lane, he discovers the true horror of that night in the woods.

Cross has produced a superior page-turner, which brilliantly takes the reader through a complex web of intrigue stretching from this world to the next without ever selling out to help tie the ends together.

And Then There Was No One

By Gilbert Adair (Faber and Faber, £14.99)

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AND Then There Was No One is the third instalment of author Gilbert Adair's trilogy of detective novels that manage to both indulge, play on, challenge and subvert the rules of the detective genre.

The title is a homage to Agatha Christie's mystery And Then There Were None and Adair sets his drama in the Swiss town of Meiringen, near the Reichenback Falls where Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes and his arch enemy, Moriarty.

If all that was not post-modern enough, Adair himself is the narrator, drawn to a literary festival to present a Holmes short story he has written a few years hence. His detective, Evadne Mount, is then challenged with solving the death of another famous novelist.

Doubtless a clever writer, this author can occasionally come across as too clever. But for anyone partial to a Poirot or a Marple, this is a real delight.

Heliopolis

By James Scudamore (Harvill Secker, £11.99)

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BORN in a Brazilian shanty town, young Ludo faces the same fate as his poverty-stricken neighbours: a life spent serving the privileged few who live in gated communities just streets away.

But happily for the new-born boy, he and his mother are lifted out of the squalor by a kind-hearted rich couple.

Growing up in a majestic country retreat, Ludo eventually re-enters city life as a teenager, appearing to have successfully leapfrogged the social divide.

Yet despite his extraordinary opportunities, the young man proceeds to lead a shadow-like existence. Never managing to find his own voice, he works at a vacuous communication company, lusts after his untouchable adopted sister, and hates himself.

Following Scudamore's stunning 2007 debut The Amnesia Clinic, this darkly funny book occasionally drags, but is ultimately gripping.

Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall

By Luke Haines (William Heinemann, £12.99)

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THE evil antimatter duplicate of Alex James' engaging A Bit Of A Blur, Luke Haines' scorched earth memoir stumbles drunkenly through the nineties with a bad word for pretty much everyone.

Bandmates, fans, contemporaries — nobody's safe from Haines' withering wit and (legitimate) superiority complex.

From the start of his career with The Auteurs, he is openly bitter that acts he considers his inferiors are doing better than him — a state of affairs epitomised when Suede beat him to the Mercury Prize by one vote.

On the other hand, whenever things are going his way he feels a terrible urge to sabotage proceedings through sheer bloody-mindedness; his alienation of Chris Evans at the peak of Evans' hit-making powers is a particular treat.

This gleeful exercise in misanthropy is marred only by slipshod editing — misspelling various Britpop no-marks shows appropriate contempt, but surely Meat Loaf and The Rutles deserve better?