THE WIDOW'S SECRET

Brian Thompson (Atlantic, £12.99)

Victorian crime novels are in vogue, following the success of Sarah Walter's lesbian romp Fingersmith. Oxford's Brian Thompson, author of the award-winning memoir Keeping Mum, is evidently hoping to jump on the bandwagon with his heroine Bella Wallis, intended to be the centre of a series of mysteries set partly in the 19th-century underworld and in partly in high society.

Bella is an unlikely sleuth, being herself the incognito author of a series of novels, written under the penname Henry Ellis Margam.

London society is dying to discover Ellis Margam's identity, because the books expose whichever scoundrel has crossed the path of the fragrant Bella.

She is irresistibly attractive to men, but disappoints a series of gormless lovers, since her proclivities lie elsewhere.

There is extra enjoyment for local readers, with references to the Feathers inn on the road to Wallingford, a fictional Berkshire manor house, and a hunt around the colleges and low-life of Oxford.

It's a diverting idea, though the book-within-a-book device sometimes fails to distract the reader from the unlikely plot.

But good luck to the author, who has obviously found his inner writer after a distinguished career in broadcasting - he's obviously having as good a time writing about Bella as she is when she wreaks her literary revenge on her latest target.