Paperbacks

Our pick of the latest releases

Official Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover

Anthony Summers

Ebury Press, £8.99

With its combination of narcissism and paranoia, Hoover’s was an “authoritarian personality”. One psychiatrist believed he would have made “a perfect high-level Nazi”.

Ample evidence that he was a monster is provided by Summers in this readable and entertaining account. Like a latter-day despot, Hoover ruled the FBI from Washington and was as much a menace to politicians as he was to criminals, communists and liberals. An apparent homophobe who used the sexual weaknesses of others against them, he may have been a closet homosexual and transvestite – a possibility explored in the film currently on release.

But there has to have been more to the man than this. After all, he had made it to the top of the FBI before he was 30, managed to control it for nearly 50 years and was regarded as a hero by millions.

None of this is explored in the book; nor is the even more interesting question of what it was (is?) in the American psyche that allowed such a flawed man to flourish. Brian Maye

Libya: From Colony to Revolution

Ronald Bruce St John

One World, £10.99

This is an excellent political history of Libya, from ancient times through independence in 1951 and the Arab Spring revolt that ended Muammar Gadafy’s 42-year reign.

The book describes how he seized power in 1969, created unique structures to govern the country, then systematically dismantled them while eliminating civil society and all opposition to his rule, and engaging in foreign adventures.

When the uprising began last February, Libya – with a small native population and considerable oil wealth – was suffering from high unemployment, a rising cost of living and political suffocation.

The author examines the tasks confronting the new regime while it strives to unite diverse elements in the population. Michael Jansen

Pigeon English

Stephen Kelman

Bloomsbury, £7.99

Shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize, Pigeon Englishis narrated by an 11-year-old from Ghana who has recently arrived in London with his mother and sister.

Everything in Harrison’s new urban setting is a source of curiosity. He loves getting the lift to his flat on the ninth floor, even though it has a “pissy smell”.

He takes a while to get his head around the idea of a launderette, or why people dislike pigeons so much, but he’s happy in his new home.

When one of his friends is found dead, Harrison soon finds himself playing a dangerous game with local thugs.

This is a tender, sometimes funny book, tackling issues of race and violence and all told with a lovable, heartbreaking innocence. Sorcha Hamilton

The Social Animal

David Brooks

Short Books, £8.99

Brooks’s message is simple: we are ruled not by our conscious but by our unconscious mind. Pure rationalism cannot acknowledge the “dark and bottomless current” of the unconscious.

The book is fascinating as popular science, but it tries to be more.

The author creates two characters, Harold and Erica, whom he uses to illustrate how the mind works from the womb to the moment of death. Harold and Erica, unfortunately, are cardboard creations and about as human as shop-window mannequins.

But Brooks would probably admit that he’s no novelist, and his heart does seem to be in the right place. The key human virtues for him are loyalty and perseverance, and his characters value culture, especially after they retire, as well as status and achievement.

In this unusual book the micro physical detail of how the brain works is joined to a gentle macro philosophy: "The deeper the social relationships a person has, the happier he or she will be." Tom Moriarty

The Devotion of Suspect X

Keigo Higashino

Little Brown, £7.99

This novel is a publishing phenomenon in its native Japan. It sold more than two million copies and was made into a film, and Higashino, predictably, has been labelled (and marketed) as a Far Eastern equivalent of Stieg Larsson.

Fans of the latter will be delighted with this book – it has the same clunky dialogue as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, could also do with a more thorough edit, and has a similarly convoluted plot.

In Columbostyle, the murderer is revealed in the opening chapters, and the rest of the book follows the laboured police investigation. There's a twist, of course, but it is neither shocking nor ingenious enough to make the journey feel entirely worthwhile, although the chapters rattle along at a decent clip.

An Eastern Dragon this might well be, but there's not much fire in its belly. Laurence Mackin