Eye of the Cricket, by James Sallis (No Exit Press, £6.99 in UK)

Comes with a big reputation, but I cannot see why. Features black writer-cum-detective Lew Griffin who plies his trade in New Orleans, the Crescent City. I found the prose stereotyped and hackneyed, the literary allusions pretentious and the storyline circuitous and unnecessarily obscure. Griffin is on a tortured journey back into his own past, while at the same time endeavouring to trace the whereabouts of three young students. Once an alcoholic, he now drinks non-alcoholic beer out of a shot glass, trying to convince himself it is bourbon. The atmosphere of menace in surely one of America's most mysterious cities is well built up and maintained, but the know-all, self-satisfied tone of the narrative made me irritated instead of intrigued. I'll pass on this one.