This week's paperbacks

Hand in the Fire

Hugo Hamilton

Fourth Estate, £7.99

The narrator of this novel is a young Serb, Vid Cosic, who comes to Ireland to work on the building sites of the boom. He makes friends with a Dublin lawyer, Kevin Concannon, but, as Vid swiftly discovers, the Irish attitude to friendship is as ambiguous as the Irish way of speaking English. "A friend is someone who would put his hand in the fire for you," Concannon declares, though as the story unfolds it becomes clear that the hand in question isn't going to be his. Hugo Hamilton grew up in Dún Laoghaire speaking Irish and German, so linguistic and social dislocation are themes that lie close to his heart. His boom-time Ireland is full of spaced-out, wired-up people, their interaction fuelled by alcohol and violence. Beyond and below this, however, is another Ireland altogether, surrounded by water and enigmatic islands, both of which play major roles in the novel's exploration of kinship, identity and distance. Hamilton's eye for detail, his ear for language and his wonderfully low-key humour are the oxygen that make this appropriately titled novel crackle with intelligence and energy. ARMINTA WALLACE

The Loss Adjustor

Aifric Campbell

Serpent’s Tail, £7.99

Caro, the loss adjustor of the title, has closed herself off from the outside world: she chose her hermetic life many years ago, and intends to keep things this way. The two people who once meant so much to her – the other corners of an intense adolescent love triangle – have vanished from her world, one by choice, one through death. Years later, Caro is still racked by guilt over the one and in love with the other. It is a moody novel, taken at a sometimes too languorous pace, but offering rewarding insights into its characters. Estelle, the child whose death haunts Caro, is particularly memorable. The constant note of foreboding begins to get tiring, however, and in the end does not fully pay off. The book's strength is in portraiture more than in plot, and when Caro draws back the curtain to reveal, finally, the circumstances of Estelle's death, the dramatic high note inevitably falls a little short of expectations. CLAIRE ANDERSON-WHEELER

Hitch-22

Christopher Hitchens

Atlantic Books, £9.99

Christopher Hitchens, one of the most controversial dissenters of his generation, has contributed hugely to the public discourse of the past 40 years. Though dense with fascinating and at times horrifying first-hand accounts of global social unrest and political upheaval, this witty and impassioned memoir is far more than a protracted lecture on the evils that men do. Hitchens's unflinchingly honest voice speaks tenderly about the sacrifices and disappointments of his parents, and the friendships that have sustained and challenged him over the years, as well as the human face of many politicised conflict zones. His prose is fiery and lyrical, which prevents the necessary, if comparatively dull, chapters depicting his school and college life from becoming tedious. A new foreword, in which he discusses the recently diagnosed cancer that is threatening his life, is a touching reminder that this tireless crusader for humanity's downtrodden may be nearing the end of his journey. DAN SHEEHAN

Orchid Blue

Eoin McNamee

Faber, £7.99

Reading a novel by Eoin McNamee is a disturbing business. I had almost finished this one before it dawned on me that I was, actually, reading a novel. Until then I had been reacting, in my own head, to a crime-scene reconstruction or a true-crime documentary; something, in a word, real. How does McNamee do this? Partly by the uncanny hyperaccuracy of his portrayal of life along the Border in the early 1960s, so vivid you can hear and smell it. I certainly can: my father played in a dance band like the one that blasted out It's Now or Neveron the night Pearl Gamble was murdered. And then the case itself is a true crime, as is the fact that a man named Robert McGladdery was hanged for that murder, the last man to be executed in Northern Ireland (in 1961) with the blessing of the authorities. McNamee combines a forensic reconstruction of the proceedings with a literary meditation on small-town thuggery and high-echelon arrogance. It's a formidable achievement, and a book you won't put down in a hurry. ARMINTA WALLACE

Pirates of Barbary

Adrian Tinniswood

Vintage, £9.99

What was it that turned the 17th-century corsairs from the Berber fiefdoms of north Africa into the terrifying fleets of sea robbers that they became? Greed, answers Tinniswood in his meticulously researched history of unrestrained murder, robbery and kidnapping on the high seas. The Barbary states were Islamic, and many corsairs described what they did as a "sea jihad" against Christian influences. Europeans condemned "Muhammadan tyranny" and equated Islam with piracy. In fact, James I went so far as to call the Barbary corsairs "the common enemy of mankind". Tinniswood plays down the clash-of-civilisations idea and argues that Barbary piracy was primarily a commercial enterprise and that some of the most fearsome pirates were actually renegade Europeans, including the notorious Yusuf Rais, originally John Ward, a fisherman from Faversham. This is a brisk, entertaining story, with royal proclamations, letters, maps and lavishness illumining Tinniswood's vivid tales. LORRAINE COURTNEY