A round up of this week's paperbacks
Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Penguin, £9.99
The dismal scientist and his journalistic partner are back with a follow-up to their 2005 smash, Freakonomics, and, thank God, they aren't dealing with the financial meltdown. Their thesis hasn't changed this time round – people respond to incentives, and actions have unintended consequences – nor has their fondness for asking off-the-wall questions, making unexpected comparisons and highlighting some fascinating research. Among the varying, and unusual, topics covered are the apparent correlation between television and women's rights; the market trends of the prostitution industry; searching for terrorists in minute banking data; measuring human altruism and even monkeys with their own money. While the authors' approach has been criticised, mainly for a rather glib section on climate change, this is fun and provocative summertime reading, full of surprises, perfect for sunny beaches or gardens. Daniel Bolger
Set in Stone
Catherine Dunne
Pan, £6.99
Catherine Dunne's new novel is a tense psychological thriller set in an affluent Dublin suburb. Artist Lynda Graham and her property developer husband, Robert, are pleased when their shy son Ciarán brings a friend home from college. Jon is charming, friendly and helpful – but soon after his arrival strange things start happening in the Graham family home. Their beautiful garden is destroyed, things go missing, and messages arrive from Robert's estranged and deeply troubled brother Danny, who feels his brother owes him something. Meanwhile, a mysterious man is hiding near the house, watching over the unsuspecting Grahams. While the coincidences that draw the novel's various plot strands together are less than convincing, the Graham family's dynamic rings true, and Dunne expertly creates an atmosphere of tension and dread. Anna Carey
I’ll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir
Brian Keenan
Vintage, £8.99
Brian Keenan is best known for the four-and-a-half years he spent as a hostage in Lebanon, and for An Evil Cradling, his bestselling book about that gruelling experience. This memoir is an altogether different beast: there is no headline-grabbing drama nor are there any particularly shocking events. Rather, it is a sometimes nostalgic account of the minutiae of a child's ordinary, everyday life. It provides an insight into working-class Protestant Belfast of the 1950s and 1960s, while also being an at times affectionate, at times searching, portrait of Keenan's parents – in particular, as the book progresses, his distant mother. An image emerges of Keenan himself as a shy, quiet boy, existing somewhat at a remove from his family and the community around him, and seeking always other worlds, whether imaginary or real. Although it lapses into sentimentality on occasion, overall I'll Tell Me Ma is an honest account of a man sifting through his childhood memories and attempting to comprehend their significance. Eimear McKeith
The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
Michael Wolff
Vintage, £9.99
In 2007, Rupert Murdoch achieved a long-held ambition when he took control of the Wall Street Journal. Dismayed liberals predicted the arch-bogeyman, who had built a media empire around the tabloid values of the Sunand the News of the Worldin Britain and the New York Postand Fox News in the States, would whittle away their venerable broadsheet's fabled editorial integrity. Murdoch's competitors and his own executives scratched their heads – why now? Were the print media not dying? For Murdoch, it was about two things: his disdain of elites and his love of newspapers. Given unprecedented access to Murdoch, his News Corp lieutenants and his family, Vanity Faircolumnist Michael Wolff has produced a compelling and not unsympathetic portrait, which, skilfully interwoven with the story of the WSJdeal, manages to get right under the skin of its subject. A must-read for anyone with an interest in the media, especially newspapers. Tim Fanning
Driving Like Crazy: 30 Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending
PJ O’Rourke
Atlantic, £8.99
This is a collection of some of O'Rourke's car journalism since 1977, in which the author delivers off-road adventure stories and tales of old vehicles that don't function properly and are yet delightful. O'Rourke's favourite device is the humorous metaphor and the book has many; some funny, and some as clunky as the 1956 Buick Special the author drives from Florida to Los Angeles in the best of these stories. There are some good descriptions in the travel chapters, though the book is proudly insubstantial throughout. At his best, O'Rourke is silly and fun-loving. At his worst he can seem arrogant even while being self-deprecating, is unabashedly shallow, and is complacently snobbish in his espousal of American Conservatism. His diatribes against political correctness and health and safety laws are enjoyable, but his pearls of political wisdom are generally just morsels of buzz-word rhetoric thrown to the hungry converted. Colm Farren
