The Photograph, by Eamonn Sweeney (Picador, £6.99 in UK)

Our grubby recent history is given a thorough airing in Eamon Sweeney's beautifully realised second novel, which takes as its starting-point an old photograph of four men. The book works on various levels: readers can play spot-the-taoiseach with The Man With The Pipe, The Tough Guy, The Canny Dub and the one - as near to a hero as Sweeney is prepared to get - who made his fortune out of ballrooms; or spot-the-hack as a herd of pretentious, self-obsessed journalists (surely not?) parades in and out of Dublin's trendiest night-spots. On these topics Sweeney is more affectionate than angry; but he can gear effortlessly up to the level of vitriol, and does so in his portrait of the awful Father Gerry Lee, the paedophile priest whose extradition warrant goes missing and brings down a government. While The Photograph resembles a thriller it's actually more of a shocker.