The Irish Times reviews a selection of paperbacks
An Irish Solution Cormac Millar Penguin, £6.99
When it comes to crime fiction, the Irish body count has remained stubbornly low. Dublin is due a decent detective, and in Séamus Joyce, Cormac Millar has created someone up to the job. Joyce is the new head of iDEA, the Irish Drug Enforcement Agency. Political, personal and police pressures mean Joyce has few allies. Drug-trade small-timers are being made scapegoats while the big guys go unnoticed. The novel becomes absorbed in the details of Dublin's legal and media scenes, populated by such characters as "that slithy tove, Peter Simons of Radio Free Dublin". Are these worlds as murky as the drugs business? To call your hero Séamus Joyce is to invite serious critical attention, but it is as a readable crime novel that An Irish Solution succeeds. The first instalment fills a vacancy in the detective market and offers scope for future Joycean adventures. - Ralph Benson
The Bone Woman Clea Koff Atlantic Books, £8.99
At 23, Clea Koff joined the UN International Criminal Tribunal mission to Rwanda as part of a forensic anthropology team to unearth and identify bodies from the 1994 genocide. With the detachment of a scientist and the idealism of a new graduate, she tackled mass grave after mass grave, each discovery proving that dead men do tell tales. In Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, she worked tirelessly to reunite grieving families with the remains of loved ones lost. The Bone Woman is not for the squeamish, something Koff has never never been - as a child, she buried dead animals, only to exhume them later for examination. So deep-seated and longstanding is her dedication, one worries whether it's healthy. Still, it is reassuring and inspiring that people of her calibre are bringing criminals to justice and rebuilding a sense of order in war-shattered communities. - Nora Mahony
Big If Mark Costello Atlantic Books, £7.99
With its backdrop of a New Hampshire primary, Costello's sprawling, high-tempo novel goes right to the heart of American hopes and fears. Vi Asplund returns to her New England childhood home as part of the nameless vice-president's protection team as his election campaign gathers pace. Vi and her colleagues keep their vulnerability well hidden beneath their cool, professional exteriors in an occupation where taking a bullet in the chest is considered a job well done. Costello's characters try to deal with the strains their work puts on their personal lives as well as the loss of one of their leading figures in a botched operation, while simultaneously trying to keep the VP out of harm's way. This is an America where democracy and violence are inextricably linked. Through his main characters, Costello presents a nation ill at ease with itself and its real and perceived threats. - Tom Cooney
Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos Natacha Du Pont De Bie Sceptre, £7.99
The bushtucker trials in television's I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! featured a selection of repulsive creatures. But even an oleaginous royal butler might balk at "moreish" delicacies such as raw water buffalo salad, pig's lung with lemon grass, hot silkworm larvae "straight from the pot", warm turkey blood and the eponymous broth. How very unlike the home life of his own dear queen. The author, a self-confessed "food tourist", detected a paucity of guides to Laos and succumbed to temptation. Here's one not made earlier. Detailed recipes, which may titillate decadent epicures, overwhelm an otherwise passable account of this remote communist country, slowly opening up to western tourists. Go there before McDonald's - if you dare. - Michael Parsons
The Island at the Centre of the World: The Untold History of the Founding of New York Russell Shorto Black Swan, £7.99
Shorto's history of the founding of New York by the Dutch is a gem. It is a history filled with dashing characters, ludicrous happenings, international subterfuge, tragedy, boldness and myopia. Beginning with Henry Hudson's voyage into the welcoming harbour that surrounds Manhattan Island in the early 1600s, Shorto tells a riveting tale of New York in its wild state, of its early colonies and the truth behind how the natives famously sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24. Perhaps he is a little too exuberant in describing the world-altering importance of various small events, but he illustrates beautifully how a multi-cultural New York sprang from a tradition of Dutch tolerance. Shorto brings colour and context to a place familiar even to strangers. But if you know New York, then this geographical and cultural history will be a real treat. - Shane Hegarty
Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction Hans Blix Bloomsbury, £7.99
UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix agreed with US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld that "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" of weapons of mass destruction. Yet Blix and his team of fewer than 200 inspectors were permitted only 15 weeks to find evidence of WMD in Iraq. For Blix, the US and its allies were not critical enough of intelligence reports. None of the intelligence supplied to his organisation led to a significant weapons find in Iraq. So was this intelligence reliable enough to justify an invasion? This is a raw version of the events before the war. It becomes gripping as the clock ticks closer to midnight and Blix shuttles between New York, Baghdad and assorted capital cities. An epilogue written for this edition examines the future of weapons control. - Ralph Benson