If you like to read about guys and dolls with colourful names and sinful habits who deftly remain (most of the time) just beyond the reach of the law, Damon Runyon's humorous short stories are a very good bet. They are a sheer delight to read.

Most people have heard of the musical "Guys and Dolls" based on some of these stories, in particular "The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Pick The Winner". The characters in them are often "on the lam" (fleeing justice), without ready scratch, "puffing at an old stinkaroo", "cooling off" with a couple of "plugs" in them, pulling a job or generally just trying to con each other. Runyon is famous for cramming his writing with vernacular that was equally as colourful as his characters.

Hot Horse Harry, Big False Face, Little Isadore, Spanish John and Miss Cutie Singlelton are just a few among gamblers and gangsters galore dwelling in New York during the era of depression and prohibition. Their antics are described in a light-hearted series of comedies in which the line of demarcation between good guys and bad guys becomes so blurred as to be almost non-existent. Since Runyon was a journalist of the time that's probably how he saw it. He was probably right.

I just love a good psychological study. James Clavell's 1962 novel 'King Rat' is every bit just that.

This is not an ideal book to be read by the mother of a young man who has just joined the navy. She may not sleep well for quite a while. It is a truly shocking account of a real life.

A light and breezy, powerfully penetrating, thoroughly charming depiction of social travesty, abuse and injustice among good and decent people seems like a highly contradictory description, but when the book is Pearl S Buck's classic The Good Earth, it's accurate.

Henry Rider Haggard's rollicking romance of perilous high adventure relates the discovery of a lost tribe inhabiting a lost city in the heart of Africa, ruled for more than a thousand years by Ayesha, an omnipotent and apparently immortal queen who inflicts terrifying tortures and/or sudden, horrible death upon those who displease her. The original 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' was a nasty piece of work, driven by an omnipotent desire to somehow effect the reincarnation of her (very) long-dead lover.

This 1935 novel would not be widely read nowadays, being hard to find, anyway. The world is familiar with the story mainly through the 1980 BBC telemovie of the same name.

It is, in fact, a delightful book that I have loaned to a number of people (risky!) who found it equally as rewarding to read as I did.

A middle-class Englishman Peter Inglewood murders by poison the wife he is unhappily married to. He is found out. He flees, knowing that he must face the prospect of a trial and being hung if he is found guilty. Most readers know that from the outset. The story is related in such a fashion that it examines the thoughts, attitudes and motives that inspired him to commit the crime believing that he could get away with it.

The reader's interest is embraced by pure curiosity and the satisfaction of it as the author skillfully reveals an amazing progression of facts detailing how the murder was carried out, how suspicion of Inglewood became aroused and how the police identified the crime. That first half of the book is relatively slow-moving. The second half, detailing the manhunt, capture and trial becomes rather more blistering. A somewhat laborious tale turns into a fantastic thriller.

The story has two key strengths. One is the enormous interest of the facts divulged as the plot develops. The other is the amazingly reality of it's content. Is it a fiction? apparently so, but one so faultlessly realistic that it could well be a documentary.

I rated this book 9.5 out of ten.