Books - Review

'House Arrest' - reality TV at its worst. A Big Brother clone, but with a difference - a murder is committed inside the house during a drunken orgy, and surely the guilty party must have been one of the contestants?

Very entertaining, funny in places, mostly where the detective has to get his trendy young colleagues' remarks translated into proper English.

Polly (hippy peace activist) and General Jack (US soldier destined to be President) meet during the Greenham Common women's protest and unlikely-ly fall in love. But then Jack decides to put his soldier career first and deserts Polly. Years later he reappears in her life, at 2.00am, coincidentally just as her stalker Peter also reappears.

This was pretty dull. Polly and Jack spend hours going round in circles, discussing relationships and politics while the story doesn't go anywhere. It felt like a good idea for a very short story stretched into a long book.