London Bridges is something of a departure for James Patterson's Alex Cross novels in that it contains a serious speculation about what would-some might say, what will-happen if international crime copies the methods of terrorists or forms an alliance with them. The Russian mafia boss known as the Wolf delivers an ultimatum-large cash payments will be made and various prisoners released, or he will set off nuclear explosions in London, New York, Paris and Tel Aviv. To prove his seriousness, he has already destroyed several small townships and a couple of bridges; this book inhabits a world where people will murder thousands just to prove that they are serious. Cross's usual ability to get inside the mind of a killer is far more of a problem when the killer is a man who has successfully erased his past, who communicates through cut-outs and expendable hirelings. Patterson's terse chapters and breakneck pacing are effective here-with its extended displays of insider knowledge and casual attitude to torture, this is not a likeable book, but it is a suspenseful one. -Roz Kaveney.

Ex-commando, Chris Ryan, did three extensive tours with the SAS as an "assaulter", "sniper" and "Sniper Team Leader" before becoming a bestselling thriller writer. His hands-on field experience makes a definitive mark in his writing and is personified in the character of Geordie Sharp, an everyman's Rambo. In the fifth episode, Tenth Man Down, Sharp finds himself on his toughest assignment yet: to reclaim a lucrative African diamond mine held by Kamangan rebels and escape the evil spell of a Sin'ganga or witch doctor. To make matters worse, as Sharp and his men move in, they discover the rebels are being supported by ex-US Navy SEAL mercenaries. As they try and uncover the hidden agenda, Sharp is taken prisoner with comrade-in-arms, Whinger. In line with the Sin'ganga's predictions, Whinger is brutally slaughtered, leaving Sharp to break the conspiracy and reunite with his team alone. Ryan's mean, lean, fast-moving prose is filled with colourful military descriptors and salute- inducing narrative: "I wanted to introduce him to Pen-y-Fen, the mountain whose silhouette is supposed to be graven on every Special Forces man's heart. " And for those not familiar with military jargon and the Kamangan dialect, there's also a glossary to guide you through thorny verbiage. Akin to reading a solider's diary, the action in The Tenth Man Down is gritty, straightforward and believable. -Susan Queue.

Grasshopper is the tale of Clodagh's recovery from the death of her best friend and liberation from the guilt her parents have imposed on her for the pylon-climbing that led to it; it is also the tale of new mistakes, and their disastrous consequences. In the London of the late 80s, Clodagh finds her own level-and it is way above the streets, with a roof-jaunting group of disaffected young people, each with a trauma of their own. For Swedish Liv, it is the nightmare of au-pairing; for Silver, it was abduction as a small boy; for the sinister young thug Jimmy, it was sexual abuse on a massive scale. When they graduate from merely clambering around to trying to do good, and help a couple on the run from the social services with a foster child, that is when the trouble starts. The audiobook adaptation is taut and passionate; Frances Barber's range of voices and characterisations adds immediacy to the strong characterisation and never becomes a mere series of comic impersonations, she retains a sense of this story's urgency even in the chunks of back-story that punctuate the main action. Duration: 5 hours-Roz Kaveney.

With Absolution Gap, Alastair Reynolds completes the star-spanning Inhibitors trilogy in which the previous books were Revelation Space and Redemption Ark. The Inhibitors are a mechanical plague, mindlessly but very resourcefully wiping out space-going civilisations that come to their notice. Their latest target is humanity, which lost a round in Redemption Ark. One small human faction now has stealth weapons and technologies that can almost fight Inhibitor assault to a standstill, but running away still seems the only long-term option. From the same cryptic source as that supertechnology, filtered through a young girl's mind, comes the urgent message to make an interstellar trek to Hela, barren moon of the gas-giant Haldora. Hela is home to an obsessive religion fuelled partly by mind viruses and partly by the miracle of Haldora. This unpredictable, unbelievable event happens in an eyeblink, but more and more often. For the devout this increasing frequency is a signal of the End Times, which is why a group of vast mobile cathedrals lumbers forever around Hela-to keep Haldora at the zenith for best observation of its marvels. And on this last circuit, with a madman in command, the greatest cathedral of all plans an impossible short cut over the mysterious, delicate bridge spanning an immense rift in Hela's surface: Absolution Gap. There's a lot of action with both familiar and enjoyably exotic weapons; there's suffering, deceit, loss and triumph; there's a hideous revenge straight out of Jacobean tragedy, a series of awesome revelations and the last voyage of the lightship Nostalgia for Infinity that was so strangely transformed in Revelation Space. [+]