Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie (Hard Case Crime 2005)

The day he found out his daughter was dead, Joe Hope was at Cooper's flat watching horse racing on Channel 4. Joe's filly was a couple of lengths off the pace with less than two furlongs to go. He yawned and cupped his hand over his mouth. They'd been working late. It was early afternoon, Joe had had hardly any sleep and by now the adrenaline of the previous night had all but drained away. He was hot and tired and thinking about saying goodbye and going home.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (Viking 2005)

Jess

. . . And then we couldn't agree on where we'd meet. I wanted to go to Starbucks, because I like frappuccinos and all that, but JJ said he wasn't into global franchises, and Martin had read in some posey magazine about a snooty little coffee bar in between Essex Road and Upper Street where they grow their own beans while you waited or something. So to keep him happy, we met up there.

Anyway, this place had just changed its name and its vibe. The snootiness hadn't worked out, so it wasn't snooty any more. It used to be called Tres Marias, which is the name of a dam in Brazil, but the guy who ran it thought the name confused people, because what did one Mary have to do with coffee, let alone three? And he didn't even have one Mary. So now it was called Captain Coffee, and everyone knew what it sold, but it didn't seem to make much difference. It was still empty. We walked in, and the guy that ran it was wearing this old army uniform, and he saluted us, and said, Captain Coffee at your service. I thought he was funny, but Martin was like, Jesus Christ, and he tried to leave, but Captain Coffee wouldn't let us, he was that desperate. He told us we could have our coffee for free on our first visit, and a cake, if we wanted. So we didn't walk out, but the next problem was that the place was tiny. There were like three tables, and each table was six inches away from the counter, which meant that Captain Coffee was leaning on the counter listening to everything we said.

And because of who we were and what had happened to us, we wanted to talk about personal things, so it was embarrassing him standing there. Martin was like, Let's drink up and go, and he stood up. But Captain Coffee went, What's the matter now? So I said, The thing is, we need to have a private conversation, and he said he understood completely, and he'd go outside until we'd finished. And I said, But really, everything we say is private, for reasons I can't go into. And he said it didn't matter, he'd still wait outside unless anyone else came. And that's what he did, and that's why we ended up going to Starbucks for our coffee meetings. It was hard to concentrate on how miserable we were, with this berk in an army uniform leaning against the window outside checking that we weren't stealing his biscuits, or biscotties as he called them. People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if that's what you want?

I'd be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafes. I'm happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I'm like, Der. That's the point. The book group thing was JJ's idea. He said people do it a lot in America, read books and talk about them; Martin reckoned it was becoming fashionable here, too, but I'd never heard of it, so it can't be that fashionable, or I'd have read about it in Dazed and Confused. The point of it was to talk about Something Else, sort of thing, and not get into rows about who was a berk and who was a prat, which was how the afternoons in Starbucks usually ended up. And what we decided was, we were going to read books by people who'd killed themselves. They were, like, our people, and so we thought we ought to find out what was going on in their heads. Martin said he thought we might learn more from people who hadn't killed themselves - we should be reading up on what was so great about staying alive, not what was so great about topping yourself. But it turned out there were like a billion writers who hadn't killed themselves, and three or four who had, so we took the easy option, and went for the smaller pile. We voted on using funds from our media appearances to buy ourselves the books.

Ramones by Nicholas Rombes (Continuum 2005)

The quality that insured the Ramones' first album would become one of the most important records in modern rock was the same quality that guaranteed they would never have the mainstream success in their time: a unified vision, the force of a single idea. There is a purity to Ramones that is almost overwhelming and frightening. Basically, the Ramones are the only punk group from the 1970s to have maintained their vision for so long, without compromise -  a vision fully and completely expressed on their very first album. In America, there is a skepticism and wariness about any artistic or cultural form that doesn't evolve, that doesn't grow. There is no more damning critique than the charge of repeating yourself. And yet punk was precisely about repetition; its art lay in the rejection of elaboration. And nowhere is this more evident than on the Ramones' first album, whose unforgiving and fearful  symmetry announced the arrival of a sound so pure it did not require change.

Any Chance of a Game? by Barney Ronay (Ebury Press 2005)

We line up for kick-off and I look at the opposition for the first time. From a distance all teams look the same, a collection of figures yet to separate out into recognisable types. You make the calculations of weight, height and speed. You look for weak links and familiar giveaways. Just for a moment football feels a bit like fighting.

Today there are no obvious signs of weakness in the opposition, no pale camel-like figures fretting in the unaccustomed strip. You get a good idea from the boots (worn in?), the amount of faded white strapping on knees (sign of the seasoned player), and even from the nicknames. Beware of the bantering team. This lot look as though they've shared the same playground, clubhouse, family Christmases and shrinking gene pool for the last thirty years. Proper pub teams are rare these days. When you do meet one you know you're going to get a game.

Hateland by Bernard O'Mahoney and Mick McGovern (Mainstream Publishing 2005)

The army seemed the least unsatisfactory alternative, although my friends laughed hysterically at the idea of me as a soldier. They didn't think I'd last five minutes in an environment where I had to take orders. The British Army was the first extreme right-wing organisation I ever joined. Patriotism, or rather a narrow, arrogant, Rule-Britannia, God-save-the-Queen jingoism was rammed down our throats at every opportunity. And, like the other far-right groups I later encountered, the forces of the Crown didn't seem to care too much about the presence of criminals in the ranks.

Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft (Chicago Review Press 2005)

Although they saw less of one another in the last few years before Walters' death, John remained terribly fond of him. They had a closeness that was quite touching to observe. John frequently characterised their relationship as being like that of a man and his dog, but with each plainly believing the other to be the dog. Walters came up with his own analogy, likening John to Eeyore from A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories. 'Everybody's having honey while he's in some damp corner of a field, alone and ignored, with nothing but thistles,' noted Walters. 'If I call to remind him that he has a programme on Bank Holiday, it's: "Everybody gets a holiday but me." If I say he's got the day off to make way for some sort of Radio 1 special, it's: "They're trying to get rid of me." Either way it's thistles and I suspect he finds them rather reassuring.'

Rosa by Jonathan Rabb (Random House 2005)

Pimm bobbed his head as if conceding the point. He then took a towel and wiped his face. When he spoke, it was with a focus that was wholly unexpected: "The reason so many of you Reds are Jews, Herr Spartakus, is that a Jew is told to create heaven on earth. The next world, messiahs, fear of hell - never really been the point, has it? The Jew is meant to do it here, now. And the ones who get tired of waiting become Reds because for them, socialism is heaven on earth. The perfect world, and with no God telling them what to do this time. Everyone just as good as the rest. Everyone looking out for the rest. The Red can't tell you how you're supposed to get there - in fact, all he can tell you is what you're not supposed to do and what won't be there - but, still, he thinks he can build it. Sounds familiar, does it?" Pimm paused. "Your Red never loses what makes him a Jew; he simply shifts his focus." Pimm held Jogiches's gaze and then he turned to Hoffner. "You've get my help, Inspector, not because it's good for business, or because the devil I know is better than the devil I don't, but because even if nothing else of what you're saying is true, I have no interest in having one more lunatic tell me what my elimination is part of his grand plan." He shouted to the door. "Zenlo." The man appeared instantly. "We're going east. Tell the boys."

Pimm a Jew and a political one at that, thought Hoffner: the world was full of surprises. At least this one was working in their favour.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Vintage Crime 2005)

"A left-wing magazine."

"That depends on how you define the concept 'left-wing.' Millenium is generally viewed as critical of society, but I'm guessing the anarchists think it's a wimpy bourgeois crap magazine along the lines of Arena or Ordfront, while the Moderate Students Association probably thinks that the editors are all Bolsheviks. There is nothing to indicate that Blomkvist has ever been active politically, even during the left-wing wave when he was going to prep school. VVhile he was plugging away at the School of Iournalism he was living with a girl who at the time was active in the Syndicalists and today sits in Parliament as a representative of the Left party. He seems to have been given the left-wing stamp primarily because as a financial journalist he specialises in investigative reporting about corruption and shady transactions in the corporate world. He has done some devastating individual portraits of captains of industry and politicians-which were most likely well deserved-and caused a number of resignations and legal repercussions. The most well-known was the Arboga affair, which resulted in the forced resignation of a Conservative politician and the sentencing of a former councillor to a year in prison for embezzlement. Calling attention to crimes can hardly be considered an indication that someone is left-wing.”

Drama City by George P. Pelecanos (Phoenix Books 2005)

Lorenzo was intending to go to the Tahoe, radio in, and check on the status of the MPD when he saw a man and a young man coming toward him. He recognized the older of the two and tried to place him. As he was doing this, Lorenzo realized that he had been leaning against the silver BMW. He moved off the car.

The two got nearer, and it came to Lorenzo who the older one was: Melvrn Lee. Lee and Lorenzo had both come up in Park View. Lee had worked for Deacon Taylor, done time, come uptown, and was rumored to be workrng for Deacon again. Lee had made himself a rep when he was young. But looking at him now Lorenzo realized that prison had broken him, even if Lee drd not know this himself. Lee and his running partner stopped a few feet shy of Lorenzo.

Lee was all arms and legs wrth a small torso, as if God had run out of the right size the day he'd made him. Lee's head was tiny, and his eyes bulged slightly. He looked like something that crawled up a wall. He wore a baseball cap cocked sideways on his head. He wore the oversize jeans. He was trying for that youth thing but it was never going to work for him again. Man his age to be dressed that way, it was just pathetic. He was going for down, but the vibe he put out was defeat.

The boy standing beside Lee had slack posture and nothing eyes.

My Father and other Working-Class Football Heroes by Gary Imlach (Yellow Jersey Press 2005)

Later, I called around and discovered that two other members of Scotland’s 1958 World Cup Squad had been in the same situation as my father. Archie Roberston of Clyde was dead; Hibs’ Eddie Turnbull had never bothered pursuing the SFA for a cap. I was inclined to agree with Eddie’s stoic acceptance of the rules as the rules, and the players simply victims of the period in which they’d played. Then I spoke to Tommy Docherty, who had gone on to manage the national team in the early ’70s, and heard the story of how he’d intervened to help get a cap for Bob Wilson. Bob, he told me, had played for Scotland but never against the home countries.

What? The Scottish Football Association, with its fear of floodgates and its respect for tradition, had been dishing out retrospective caps on a selective basis? It was only Tommy Docherty’s famous assertion that the best football managers are liars that kept me from calling Hampden Park there and then. Instead, I contacted Bob Wilson. He cautiously declared himself unaware of any intervention by Tommy Docherty on his behalf; but otherwise confirmed the story, which apart from the outcome sounded exactly like my father's. He’d written periodically to the SFA over the course of two decades with no success. It was only after Craig Brown took over as national manager that he’d got his cap. jim Farry had also been helpful.

I mentioned this discovery to Eddie Turnbull. ‘The English keeper? He got a cap? You’re kidding’ He was scarcely less incredulous by the time I’d outlined the sequence of events to him. ‘That’s ridiculous. That takes some believing, that Wilson got a cap.’

To many people, Bob Wilson - born in Chesterfield and a key member of Arsenal’s double-winning side of 1970-71 - was an English keeper and a very good one. In fact, he was perfectly well qualified to play for Scotland through his parents and turned out twice for the national team: in a European Championship qualifier against Portugal and a friendly against Holland, both in late 1971. His cap, inscribed with the initials P and H, finally arrived in 1996. That made it two years after Jim Farry had first written to my father, all sympathy and tied-hands, to say that it simply wasn’t possible, and four years before the SFA - following ‘some research into the circumstances’ - had turned him down for a second time.

The implication was clear: a well-known, well connected television presenter who could call on the Scotland manager to lobby on his behalf was worth an international cap in the eyes of the SFA; an older name frm a less spotlit era, sitting at his dining-room table with a ballpoint pen and some Basildon Bond, could be safely fobbed off with the official line.