TV chat show at one extreme; grinding poverty, sink estates and fallen children at the other extreme. Sam Hayes’s latest novel Someone Else’s Son (Headline, £19.99) is an emotional thriller that lurches wildly between these extremes, and makes that psychological rollercoaster into a gripping story.

Carrie Kent is the glamorous TV chat show host, who — some would say — exploits her studio guests, asking them the most probing questions, with the express intention of exposing benefit cheats, cheating partners and the like. Her life could hardly be more different from theirs — a life of luxury, with the only two minor blemishes being her blind ex-husband Brody and teenage son Max. Hers is a classic dysfunctional family — though ‘family’ would be putting it too strongly.

But one morning, while on air, she is suddenly thrown into the world of poverty and violence herself, as she receives a phone call to tell her that Max has been murdered outside the school gates.

How Carrie deals with this, how she tracks down Brody, and what the two of them discover — too late — about their son, his friends and his preoccupations, makes a surprisingly excellent tale. It is tantalisingly told, with flashbacks to different dates and times, so that we learn a little more about Max as the book progresses, and have the satisfaction of knowing what Carrie doesn’t have a clue about. Not a comfortable read, but a genuinely enthralling one that definitely keeps one guessing to the end.

Altar of Eden by James Rollins (Orion, £6.99) — thank goodness — is not so plausible, for it contains deep and dark horror. Lorna Polk, a vet, is called to a shipwrecked fishing trawler, and finds a cargo of exotic animals on board. However, the animals all have something wrong with them — a featherless parrot, conjoined monkeys, and a python with legs. Horrible indeed. Yet more horrible is the discovery that these animals all share a heightened intelligence, and have been genetically developed in this way. The scientists who created these animals are single-minded terrorists, intent on further experiments and silencing anyone who comes across their path.

This book is action-packed with hair-raising adventures, and has all the ingredients that I imagine film-makers look for — mad scientists, terrorists, escaped man-eating tigers, the love interest, and emotional baggage. It is easy to envisage this book being made into a film, and a riveting film it would be.